The Vermont Supreme Court will take up an eminent domain case between the state’s transmission utility and landowners.
Vermont Electric Power Corp., or VELCO, appealed a $1 million jury award to the landowners after the company built a radio tower on their mountaintop property in Wells.
Felix Kniazev and Olga Julinska abandoned their home and moved to Boston after VELCO constructed a communications tower near their house. In December, a trial court sided with the landowners and awarded them the amount of the property’s total appraised value in 2011 for diminution resulting from construction of the tower.
The couple are prepared to defend their position that VELCO did not provide adequate compensation through the eminent domain process.
“You know us, we are the fighters. We never surrender to the corporations,” Kniazev said.
In July 2012, the Public Service Board, the state’s utility regulator, ordered VELCO to pay the landowners $25,750. This came after the couple filed for a protective order in October 2011.
VELCO erected the radio tower for line workers to communicate with the utilities when repairing the electrical grid.
The company maintains that the jury’s decision was based on a misunderstanding of the facts of the dispute.
“Our appeal largely hinges upon one of process … and we continue to believe that due process was not followed,” VELCO Vice President Kerrick Johnson said.
