Staff writer Dan Klepal contributed to this story
Gwinnett County commissioners agreed Tuesday to pay an additional $1.4 million to settle a long-running lawsuit over a land purchase.
The county has already paid $5.4 million to buy the property owned by Old Peachtree Partners, after being ordered by the court. But the two sides continued to argue about whether Gwinnett owed the property owners interest for the period of litigation. This settlement resolves those arguments.
The suits stemmed from a back-and-forth purchase agreement that began in 2007, when the county wanted to buy 1.8 acres, near I-85 outside Suwanee, to extend a road. Old Peachtree Partners agreed, then reneged on the contract after learning Gwinnett also planned to put sewer across the property. Doing so, Peachtree Partners contended, would render an additional 16 acres unusable.
Gwinnett eventually agreed to buy those 16 acres for $5.2 million, in addition to the original 1.8 acres. But then the county backed off that agreement.
At the time, in 2009, Gwinnett commissioners were being investigated for buying land to settle lawsuits. District Attorney Danny Porter noted in an email to commissioners that Gwinnett had no plans for the land, and that the county was strapped for cash.
“Frankly, it is with a great deal of shock that I read this agenda item, particularly with what I know about the ownership of the property and in this time of budgetary distress,” the 2009 e-mail said. “If this item goes forward tomorrow, you can expect to be explaining this and other recent land purchases to the Grand Jury.”
In an email Tuesday, Porter said he did not have any knowledge of the latest settlement, and that he hasn’t followed the progress of the case since the Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Old Peachtree Partners in 2013. Porter said he got involved in the first place because a source had told him “there was something odd in the transaction.”
Commission Chairman Charlotte Nash said to continue the litigation would be costly. Old Peachtree Partners was asking for $1.46 million in interest for the time it couldn’t use the land while litigation was ongoing, and it had already been approved by the Court of Appeals.
“Any time, even if you aren’t particularly enthusiastic about the settlement itself, it’s a good thing to get it off the list of things to be dealt with,” Nash said. “It’s a defined end to this piece of litigation.”
County Commissioner John Heard said he was “absolutely glad it’s off the books.”
“We inherited the problem,” he said.
Commissioners voted 4-1 to accept the settlement. County Commissioner Jace Brooks, who voted in opposition, would only say that he was “not in favor of it.”
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