Defense Verdict Obtained for Village in Erosion Case

In the case of Robert DeFranco v. Village of Moreland Hills, John T. McLandrich and Roland J. De Monte gained a defense verdict for their client, the Village of Moreland Hills. The plaintiff in this case, a resident of the Village of Moreland Hills, accused the Village of negligently maintaining the roadside ditches which ran parallel to the plaintiff’s property. The plaintiff claimed that the Village’s alleged negligence had caused the roadside ditches to overflow, which in turn severely eroded the plaintiff’s property.

The plaintiff hired two experts to testify on his behalf: an appraiser to testify that the plaintiff’s property would have been worth over half a million dollars but for its erosion problem, and a veteran civil engineer with nearly 50 years of experience to testify that the Village had been negligent in its maintenance of the roadside ditches and that this negligence was the cause of the plaintiff’s erosion problem.

Several pretrial motions were filed on behalf of the Village, all of which the trial court granted. Two important consequences of the trial court granting these motions were that the plaintiff’s expert appraiser was prohibited from testifying as to the value of the plaintiff’s land without erosion, and the plaintiff’s expert engineer was prohibited from testifying as to causation. Without any expert testimony as to either causation or damages, the plaintiff’s case was severely hampered.

The plaintiff lost any remaining chance of success when, during the plaintiff’s cross-examination, Mr. McLandrich elicited from the plaintiff the admission that, despite the plaintiff’s prior allegations to the contrary, the erosion problem had actually been improving throughout the years and his property was currently in the best shape it had ever been. The jury would later point to this admission by the plaintiff as the defining moment of the case. After little more than two hours of deliberation, the jury found for the Village of Moreland Hills.