Town calls lawyers' motion ‘unnecessary distraction'

By Pat Healy
Published: Thursday, March 29, 2007 8:51 PM CDT
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It took two angry Telluride lawyers to achieve the impossible: Telluride and the owners of the Valley Floor actually agree on something.

Both sides said Thursday they oppose the lawyers' push to intervene in the Valley Floor case, saying the two men should have no legal voice in the massive eminent-domain taking.

Last week, attorneys John Steel and Robert Korn leapt into the years-long legal and civic saga over whether Telluride can buy the 570-acre Valley Floor for $50 million. The men said the trial to value the land was unfair, the jury prejudiced, and they asked for a new trial.

But Thursday, Telluride shot back and asked that the lawyers' motion to intervene be thrown out of court. The lawyers' motion is “without any legal basis and presents an unnecessary distraction in what is already a complicated and time consuming case,” say Telluride's attorneys in their legal response.

The landowners, the San Miguel Valley Corporation, said they agreed with the town's position.

When Steel and Korn jumped into the struggle for the Valley Floor, they added a new crease to a legal and political saga as wrinkled as Einstein's frontal lobe. Friday marks the town's self-imposed deadline to come up with the private funds to buy the Valley Floor, and fundraisers are still $3 million short.

In February, a jury wounded Telluride's years-long quest to condemn the Valley Floor for open space when it said the town must pay $50 million for the land. The town had wanted to pay landowners half that sum, and has been scrambling to come up with the money ever since.

Steel and Korn say the $50 million verdict should be thrown out because the trial was illegally moved out of San Miguel County. They say the jury was also clearly prejudiced against Telluride because the town was using eminent domain to seize private property.

An affidavit from an alternate juror on the February valuation trial corroborates the lawyers' charges. In the document, alternate juror Maxine Eisele says her fellow jurors wanted to punish Telluride in their verdict valuing the land.

The town council has decided not to file motions seeking a new trial.

District Court Judge Charles Greenacre has yet to respond to Korn and Steel's bid for a retrial, but the town yesterday asked that he deny it “as it is without any legal basis or support.” The town did not address the issue of jury bias in yesterday's response.

Korn and Steel said yesterday that Telluride was trying to boot them out of the case because the town council wanted to let the Valley Floor acquisition die a quick death.

“We can't understand it,” Steel said. “They've called us an unnecessary distraction. They've called us immature. Why? What are we doing to them?”

Judge Greenacre could order a hearing on whether Steel and Korn's legal gambit can go forward, or he could now simply boot the men from the case.

The town says that Steel and Korn's motion is simply too little, too late.

Telluride's lawyers say the men can't step into the case because neither they nor their client, Harold Wondsel, owns land that is being condemned. Wondsel, who is the “plaintiff” under Korn and Steel's filing, has a small stake in the Creekside apartments, which sit next to the Valley Floor.

The town says that Wondsel cannot jump into the case just because he pays taxes in Telluride and supports the Valley Floor acquisition.

Private citizens, the town says, “no matter how personally interested they may be in the outcome, they have no legally enforceable right, for instance, to interject themselves into an ongoing condemnation action.”