This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The old saw holds that you can't fight City Hall, but the Evans Development Group didn't buy it. The company fought Salt Lake City for more than nine years — all the way to the Utah Supreme Court — and won.
Now city taxpayers are on the hook for a big sum of money — over six years of rent on a piece of property the municipality had illegally condemned and "an extraordinarily large amount" of court costs and attorney fees. The exact sum has yet to be calculated.
It all began in 2007, when Salt Lake City was working on a $50 million project to remove railroad lines along 900 South. To complete the realignment, the city needed a 2.39-acre parcel owned by Rocky Mountain Power.
But the power company said it planned to build a substation on the property and wouldn't comply.
State law prevented the city from condemning that acreage, but the municipality and Rocky Mountain hit on a plan wherein the city would condemn Evans' property — a 2.67-acre parcel at 436 W. 400 North — and then swap it for the Rocky Mountain parcel.
In October, Elizabeth Haws, senior attorney in the city attorney's office, said state law should be construed to say that such an exchange involving a public use, in this case a power substation, is legal.
The Supreme Court, in a 4-0 decision released Friday, ruled against the city.
City Hall did not provide further comment Tuesday.
But Robert Mansfield, an attorney representing Evans in the legal battle, said in an interview Tuesday that the proposed deal between Rocky Mountain and the city "stinks."
"The situation was not within the bounds of what the Legislature had authorized," he said. "This taking was not legal."
The justices ruled that Utah law required the city to maintain ownership and control of the property it had condemned.
"The city, in this case, failed to follow statutory requirements that the condemner [Salt Lake City] be in charge of the public use to which the property will be put and oversee the construction of that public use," said the opinion written by Chief Justice Matthew Durrant. "But here ... it was Rocky Mountain Power that was to be in charge of the public use of building and operating an electrical substation."
The city took possession of Evans' property in 2009 after a district court ruled in the municipality's favor. Along the way, Mansfield said his client tried to reach a settlement, but the city was convinced it was in the right.
"Typically, [district] courts will look at a municipality exercising its power of eminent domain and rubber-stamp it," Mansfield said. "But the [Utah] Supreme Court has been reeling that back."
In its ruling, the Supreme Court vacated the lower court's ruling: "We instruct the district court to order the city to return the property to Evans and resolve Evans' remaining claims for damages and attorney fees."
Exactly how much those claims and damages will be has not yet been tallied, Mansfield said.
It includes more than six years of rent on the property and over six years of attorney fees and court costs.
"I don't know, but it will be an extraordinarily large sum," he said. "A very significant sum."