Judge lets Millcreek fee case proceed

Aug. 02--Millcreek Township has failed in its effort to have a judge toss a request that it pay $3.4 million in legal fees in a civil case over flooding and eminent domain.

Still unresolved is how much, if anything, the township will owe its opponent, a trust controlled by one of the township's wealthiest residents, Laurel Hirt.

Senior Erie County Judge John A. Bozza has moved the drawn-out dispute ahead by refusing to dismiss the case. In an opinion filed Wednesday, he rejected the township's claim that Hirt's trust waited too long to ask for the fees.

The township is also arguing that the amount of the fees is unreasonable. Bozza said in the opinion that he would rule on that issue after he holds a yet-to-be-scheduled hearing on it. He would then be in line to rule on the final amount of the fees.

If Bozza awards any fees, they are likely to be less than the $3.4 million that Hirt's trust, the Angela Cres Trust, has been seeking from the township. He ruled the trust could pursue fees only for litigation over eminent domain in Erie County Court. Bozza stopped the trust from asking, as it had been, for fees it incurred in a companion claim before the state's Environmental Hearing Board. Those fees had been part of the $3.4 million request.

The court proceedings and the regulatory case do not appear "to have any direct relation to each other," Bozza wrote in the seven-page opinion.

The court action started in 2005, when the township sued to condemn about 800 feet of a drainage ditch on the trust's property, on Sterrettania Road, just northeast of Heidler Road, near Walnut Creek Middle School. Hirt, a granddaughter of the late co-founder of Erie Insurance Group, has her residence there.

The township said it wanted to dredge the ditch to control flooding. The trust defeated the township in 2012. It successfully argued that the township's attempt to take the property was too broad under Pennsylvania law.

The trust in October asked the township to reimburse its $3.4 million in legal fees, which it has paid its lawyers. Pennsylvania allows the victors in eminent-domain cases to make such requests.

ED PALATTELLA can be reached at 870-1813 or by e-mail. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ETNpalattella.

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