Trial begins for Campbell Co. landfill lawsuit

RUSTBURG — A four-year-old lawsuit that could cost Campbell County taxpayers millions of dollars came to trial Monday.

Claude and Virginia Royal, the owners of the 160-acre Twin Oaks mobile home park near Yellow Branch, sued Campbell County in 2005 and 2006 after testing in 2002 showed toxic chemicals were leaking from the county’s landfill next door into drinking water wells on the Royals’ property.

After years of legal maneuvering, Circuit Court Judge Michael Gamble ruled last month that the county was responsible for polluting the water on the Royals’ land. Now jurors are being asked to decide how much the county should pay the family.

The trial could last until the middle of next week, Gamble told jurors.

In opening statements Monday, Charlie Williams, the Royals’ lawyer, broke down the family’s demands.

Because the property is polluted, Williams told the jury, it is almost impossible to sell. The Royals’ largest demand, about $6 million, is the estimated value of the property if it was unpolluted.

The family is also asking for about $1 million in lost income from holding down rent charges to try to keep tenants from moving out, he said, although the Royals were able to switch drinking water supplies from contaminated to clean wells within days of discovering the pollution. A $2 million demand comes from the loss of groundwater, Williams said.

“What they really want, you can’t give them,” he told the jury. “They want to turn back the clock and wipe this away.”

Campbell County Attorney David Shreve said the lawsuit was about “the line between need and greed.”

Shreve said the county has been upfront with the Royals about the contamination and made several offers to install piped-in public water over the years. He also told jurors the entire Royal property is not contaminated.

When the pollution was found, he said, Claude Royal, a well driller, immediately shifted tenants in the contaminated area to clean wells in another part of the property.

Royal said in previous interviews that the county’s offer was to install public water service only on the condition that he drop his lawsuit and that he would agree not to sue the county for future damages.

Nonetheless, Shreve said, some of the Royals’ water is contaminated and the county’s landfill is the source of that pollution. He said the county has spent more than $3 million installing wells to pump out and treat the polluted water.

“We need to clean this property up,” he said. “That has to be done. We are doing that.”

Although the landfill was operated according to regulatory policies at the time, Shreve said, county officials have attempted to lay some of the blame for the pollution problems on its former landfill engineering firm, Richmond-based Joyce Engineering, Inc.

Shreve said Monday that the county has temporarily suspended a lawsuit against the company for failing to properly monitor the spread of the chemicals.

He said the county’s experts will contest the amount of money the Royals claim they are owed.

After two hours of jury selection and another two hours of opening statements, the nine-person (including two alternates) jury did not hear evidence until after 3 p.m. Monday.

Williams said he believes the Royals will finish with their evidence by Thursday. He said he also expects the jury will visit the site before the trial’s conclusion.