Millcreek: $3.4M in legal fees unjustified

Dec. 05--Another number has emerged in a Millcreek Township flooding case that centers on $3.4 million, or the amount a wealthy property owner wants the township to pay in legal fees.

The additional number is $8,668.10.

The township is citing that amount as it tries to get a judge to dismiss the request for the payment of $3.4 million in fees, made by a trust controlled by Laurel Hirt, who is a granddaughter of the late co-founder of Erie Insurance Group.

The township in 2005 offered $8,668.10 to the Angela Cres Trust so the township could condemn about 800 feet of a drainage ditch on the trust's property, on which Hirt lives, near the intersection of Heidler and Sterrettania roads in southwestern Millcreek.

The trust defeated the condemnation attempt after a seven-year court fight, and in October demanded the township pay the trust's $3.4 million in legal fees. Pennsylvania law allows such requests.

The township's lawyers are arguing the trust petitioned for fees too late, and that $3.4 million is too high in any event, particularly when compared to $8,668.10 -- the value the township put on the swath of land.

"The amount of the fees sought is so outrageous, unreasonable and out of proportion with the value of the property at issue so as to justify only a nominal award of fees or even a complete denial of the petition," the township's lawyers wrote in filings docketed Tuesday in Erie County Court.

The township wanted to condemn the parcel to dredge and widen the ditch to prevent flooding in the neighborhood during heavy rains.

Hirt, trustee of the Cres Trust, successfully argued the eminent domain request was too broad under Pennsylvania law, which allows for a condemnation to widen an existing watercourse but not to create a new watercourse. Then-Erie County Judge Michael E. Dunlavey ruled in 2010 -- and was upheld on appeals over two years -- that the township would have created about 500 feet of new channel.

Senior Erie County Judge John A. Bozza will hold a hearing Dec. 17 on the trust's fee petition.

Most property owners accede to condemnation requests and accept compensation, lawyers in the case have said. The Cres Trust instead used its "unending reserve of funds" to pursue "a litigate-at-all-costs mentality," according to the township's filings.

The trust has already paid its lawyers the $3.4 million. The township has paid its own lawyers a total of about $1 million to handle the case and others related to it.

The Cres Trust paid $930,859 to the McDonald Group, an Erie law firm; and $2,429,042 to Fox Rothschild, a Philadelphia law firm, according to the trust's petition.

The township's lawyers questioned how much the trust's lawyers charged -- more than $600 an hour for one lawyer's fees and as much as $195 for paralegals, with "more than 51 attorneys and legal staff" working on the case, said the township's filings. The highest fees were for the Philadelphia lawyers, according to court records.

In the discovery phase of the dispute -- or when the opposing sides exchange evidence -- the lawyers for the trust "racked up over $500,000 in attorneys' fees and expenses," the township's lawyers wrote.

"Again," they wrote, "an astounding amount to spend to protect a piece of property valued at $8,866.10; and wholly unreasonable."

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

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