Sangre Chronicle > Angel Fire > Family drops suit over inoperable Angel Fire sewer

A family that owns property in Angel Fire has dropped a lawsuit it filed against the village of Angel Fire earlier this year for allegedly requiring the family to spend money to connect 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 the complaint Aug. 30.

Plaintiff no longer wishes to pursue this matter against defendant and gives notice of its voluntary dismissal with prejudice, the notice of dismissal states.

Angel Fire Mayor Barbara Cottam would not say whether the village planned to settle the lawsuit out of court. She directed questions about the lawsuit to the villages attorney Joseph F. Canepa of Canepa and Vidal, PA in Santa Fe, who did not immediately respond to a telephone message from the Sangre de Cristo Chronicle Tuesday (Sept. 11).

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.

On Jan. 27, 2010, the complaint states, the village issued a memorandum stating that the family would be required to install a grinder pump and other equipment to accommodate the municipal sewer utility. The memorandum stated that the family must use the municipal sewer system to manage liquid waste from the Beaver Loop home.

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 the spring of 2011 stating that 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.

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Sangre Chronicle > Angel Fire > Family drops suit over inoperable Angel Fire sewer