Sangre Chronicle > Angel Fire > Angel Fire pays $88,000 to settle sewer lawsuit

The village of Angel Fire has paid a local couple $88,000 to drop a lawsuit filed against the municipality for allegedly requiring them to connect their Angel Fire property to an inoperable sewer system.

Rush Family Limited Partnership No. 2 filed the lawsuit in the Eighth Judicial District Court in Raton May 22 and dismissed its complaint Aug. 30. The village paid the plaintiffs, Avery and Dana Rush, from the New Mexico Self Insurers Fund, an insurance account administered by the New Mexico Municipal League.

Claimants understand and agree that they are releasing all known or unknown, present or future claims against the village of Angel Fire, its elected officials, employees, agents and insurers arising from or in any way related to the claims asserted in the lawsuit or any claims which could have been asserted, an undated, hand-written settlement agreement states.

The Rush familys complaint alleges that on Aug. 21, 2009, the village issued a statement indicating that sewer service was available at the familys residential lot at 44 Beaver Loop in the Valley of the Utes subdivision. From September 2009 to June 2011, it states, the village billed the family for sewer availability.

Plaintiff justifiably relied on Defendants series of negligent misrepresentations and proceeded to design and placed the house on the lot without consideration of locating a gravity septic system, the complaint states. Instead Plaintiff installed the specific sewage treatment system that would connect to the Defendants municipal sewage utility and thereafter completed landscaping on the surface of the lot.

But after the home was built, the complaint states, the village issued a letter in spring 2011 stating the house could not be connected to the municipal sewage system. The family was then forced to remove landscaping, install a pump-operated septic system uphill from the house, and re-landscape the scarring left by the installation process, it states.

Plaintiff unnecessarily spent time and money installing a sewage system and line to connect to the nonexistent sewer line of the village, the complaint states.

The complaint states that the Rush family was seeking monetary damages to be determined at trial, including compensatory and consequential damages, statutory damages, and such other relief deemed proper by the court.

The village settled a separate lawsuit with its Linda Apodaca, its former finance director in May.

Through the earlier settlement, the village paid Apodaca $200,000 to drop a lawsuit she filed against the municipality after she was fired from the position last year. She filed the lawsuit against the village, its Clerk Terry Cordova and then Mayor Stuart Hamilton for allegedly violating the New Mexico Whistleblower Protection Act with the termination of her employment and the Inspection of Public Records Act during her subsequent attempts to review village records.

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Sangre Chronicle > Angel Fire > Angel Fire pays $88,000 to settle sewer lawsuit