Lawyer: Fees on mark
“At as much as $659 an hour, the fees for Herbert Bass, a Philadelphia lawyer, were the highest for the attorneys in an eminent domain case between a wealthy landowner and Millcreek Township.
Whether the township will have to reimburse the landowner for those fees — as well as pay an overall legal bill of about $3 million — is an issue a judge soon will decide.
Bass testified in Erie County Court on Wednesday on behalf of the landowner, the Angela Cres Trust, which defeated the township in a seven-year fight.
The trust, for which Millcreek resident Laurel Hirt is the trustee, has invoked a state law that requires losers in eminent domain lawsuits to pay the winners’ legal fees.
Senior Erie County Judge John A. Bozza will use testimony from the hearing, which is scheduled to resume Oct. 9, to decide whether the trust’s $3 million request is reasonable. The township says the bill is too high.
Bass, who specializes in eminent domain cases, testified that he and the other lawyers were worth what the Cres Trust, through Hirt, paid them.
The township sued in 2005 to condemn 800 feet of a drainage ditch on the trust’s property, where Hirt lives, on Sterrettania Road, near Walnut Creek Middle School. Then-Erie County Judge Michael E. Dunlavey in 2012 sided with Hirt and ruled the township’s condemnation request too broad.”
Palattella, Ed. Go Erie 2 October 2014.