Township wants ‘seat at the table’ in litigation over Majestic Hills slides
Work on a hillside in the Majestic Hills plan in North Strabane Township is shown in this file photo from February.
Observer-Reporter
In this file photo from February, work continues on a hillside in the Majestic Hills plan in North Strabane Township. The township is seeking $1.678 million to acquire property affected by the landslide.
North Strabane officials initiated a lawsuit last week against a Peters Township developer, a Virginia house builder and several other firms involved in creating the landslide-ridden Majestic Hills neighborhood.
Developer Joseph DeNardo and NVR Inc. – which is based in Reston, Va., and does business as Ryan Homes – were among the entities the township named in a writ of summons it filed Thursday in Washington County Court of Common Pleas.
Solicitor Gary Sweat said the filing gives the township – which has spent millions on stabilization, demolition and road-repair work in the neighborhood since last year – a “seat at the table” in a lawsuit that’s already months underway in federal court.
“We just want the most efficient and the most expeditious avenue we can follow to collect these damages and to right these wrongs,” said Sweat.
The township is not part of the federal case, which NVR’s attorneys filed Oct. 5 against DeNardo; Monroeville-based Pennsylvania Soil and Rock Inc. and its engineer Mark Brashear; Alton Industries Inc. in Somerset Township; DeNardo’s company Majestic Hills LLC; Shari DeNardo, Joseph’s wife; and JND Properties, which court papers say the DeNardos founded together.
The case is in the U.S. District Court for Western Pennsylvania.
Along with Joseph DeNardo and NVR, the township named the same parties as defendants in its filing.
NVR’s lawsuit – which is aimed at recouping its purported losses arising from problems in the housing plan – said the builder and Majestic Hills LLC entered a lot-purchase agreement in late 2004. Majestic Hills would develop 179 single-family lots and then convey them to NVR in “buildable” condition, the suit said.
The slippages started in June and forced the evacuation of three houses on Majestic Drive that were later torn down.
Township manager Andy Walz didn’t immediately answer a request on Monday for a current total for what the ongoing work has cost the township. As of late November, it was more than $3.3 million.
Sweat said the township municipal authority also has spent money to deal with the fallout, but an exact number wasn’t immediately available from the authority.
Sweat said people displaced by the problems are staying in hotels or rented housing, lending further urgency to resolving the case.
In responses to NVR’s lawsuit, the various defendants are denying the allegations. They’re also seeking to avoid liability for the losses the builder allegedly sustained.
As part of a filing last week, DeNardo’s lawyers, who are from the firm Thomas, Thomas and Hafer, suggested NVR deserved at least part of the blame for the slides, saying the company failed to ensure foundation-laying and other work was performed properly.
The DeNardos’ lead attorney, Thomas McGinnis, didn’t return a message Monday. Neither did lawyers from the firm Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, which represents NVR.