Parkersburg Holiday Inn Appeal Denied in W.Va. Circuit Court
By Jeffrey Saulton, Special to The Times
http://www.mariettatimes.com/business/story/biz43_98200720401.asp
PARKERSBURG — A motion in the Parkersburg Inn case to set aside the verdict and award a new inverse condemnation trial was denied Wednesday in Wood County Circuit Court.
After Judge Jeffrey Reed denied the motion, Marvin Masters, attorney representing the former Parkersburg Holiday Inn and owner Jim Weigle, said the next step will be to take the case to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.
“We will take this to the Supreme Court,” Masters said. “Mr. Weigle has said he wants to file an appeal with the court. It will be filed in about a month.”
Masters said the appeal to the high court will cite the same grounds cited in circuit court for setting aside the verdict and granting a new trial.
In February, after a two-week inverse condemnation trial a Wood County jury answered no to the question “Did the West Virginia Department of Transportation, Division of Highways, take any property owned by the respondent, Parkersburg Inn, Inc.?” and “Did the actions of the West Virginia Department of Transportation, Division of Highways, in designing and constructing a highway and interchange, proximately cause any reduction in the fair market value of real property and improvements thereon owned by the respondent, Parkersburg Inn, Inc.”
In the motion, Masters said four errors occurred in the original trial. He said the errors were first, an instruction to the jury regarding how it was to determine if the hotel was harmed; two, sustaining Division of Highways objections to testimony from Jim Cochran who was not a paid expert, but who had expertise in hotel and motel management; three, Rodney Meers, was not qualified to give an opinion on the management of a hotel, and fourth, the court sustained objections of the Division of Highways to the offering of the appraisal of Randy Reed and to offering of evidence as to the amount of the hotel property appraisals from 1987 and 1994.
In an April hearing, Reed denied the first ground stating for the verdict to be set aside and for a new trial. He said he needed time to review the transcript so he could review the context of the rulings cited in the other grounds.
In his denial of that motion, Reed said the instruction was written to help the jury correctly apply the constitution. He said because there was no case with the exact set of circumstances there was no case law to instruct the jury. Reed said he had what the constitution says and what judicial decisions have been made in regard to issues raised in the trial. This involved was the access to the hotel reasonable, the judge said.
Reed said the appraisal from Randy Reed could have been confusing to jurors because the reports were to be offered in evidence without explanation after the appraiser had been qualified on the stand as an expert.
Reed said under the law Meers was qualified to testify even if his expertise was not in hotel management. Reed said in medical malpractice cases the court rules allow an individual who had expertise in a related field to testify as an expert. Reed said Meers was asked to testify if the rate increase imposed by the hotel contributed to the hotel losing business. Reed said he did not think a hotel manager could testify to whether or not a rate increase was the cause.
On Aug. 9, the hotel closed and a new Holiday Inn Express, with a different franchise owner, opened at the Mineral Wells exit of Interstate 77.