HENDERSONVILLE – Nearly 200 property owners who live along the multimillion-dollar Ecusta Trail project in Henderson and Transylvania counties who have filed lawsuits against the federal government are still waiting to be compensated, and if no settlements are made, three of the cases are set to go to trial in the summer.
There are four lawsuits that have been filed in the United States Court of Federal Claims, with the initial one being filed in June 2021 — Austin v. U.S. It has the largest number of plaintiffs at 143. Since then three more lawsuits have been filed by property owners — Dalla vs. U.S. (filed in November 2022 with 20 clients), Bridges v. U.S. (February 2022 with 11 clients) and the latest, Pearson v. U.S. (June 2023 with eight clients).
“Each lawsuit was filed on a different date, but they are all claiming the same thing — compensation for the taking of their land,” Meredith Shrinivas, a paralegal for lawyer Lindsay Brinton of the Lewis Rice LLC law firm handling the lawsuits, told the Times-News on Feb. 7.