Finally, Greensburg-Jeannette Airport suit against West Penn to reach court

It's been nearly 17 years since Wilkinsburg businessman Richard H. King filed suit in Westmoreland County seeking damages from West Penn Power over the utility's move to route a high-voltage power line across his Penn Township airport.

In the interim, the court granted six continuances as pretrial appeals worked their way through the Commonwealth Court and the state Supreme Court.

Last year, the judge originally assigned to the case retired.

But none of that has deterred King.

On Monday, attorneys in the dispute, one of the oldest active civil cases on the Westmoreland County court docket, are scheduled to begin selecting a jury in Judge David Regoli's courtroom to hear the case of Richard H. King vs. West Penn Power Co.

Citing pending litigation, spokesmen for West Penn's parent company, FirstEnergy, declined to comment on the specifics of the case.

“However, we are prepared to present our facts to the jury when the trial begins next week,” said Mark Durbin, manager of energy delivery and state communications at FirstEnergy.

King was nowhere near as reticent.

“I don't feel I have a choice but to do this. It is a case of David and Goliath, there's no question,” King said, alleging that West Penn has refused to negotiate a good-faith settlement for his losses.

The 67-year-old businessman said he had high hopes for the Greensburg-Jeannette Airport when he purchased the hilltop facility near the village of Boquet in 1992.

King, who flies for business, said he put together a 12-year plan to upgrade the facility from a general aviation-class airport into a business-class airport.

There are two business-class airports in the county, the Rostraver and Arnold Palmer Regional airports. But King said the area was ripe for a third facility.

“We believed this was viable because of the great location of this airport near business development that was occurring along the Route 22 corridor and in the Monroeville, Murrysville, Penn Township areas,” King said.

He said he was two years into the plan and had poured footers for new facilities when West Penn notified him it intended to run a high-voltage line across the airport, 600 feet from the end of the runway. After a three-year battle before the state Public Utility Commission, King said West Penn moved forward with a modified plan that accommodated his airport, but made expansion impossible.

“The monies we had spent up until then (for the proposed expansion) were for all invested in vain,” he said.

Asked about the protracted legal case, King said part of it was because of appeals — his lawyers appealed a local court order to Commonwealth Court, where they won. Then West Penn's attorneys took the issue to the state Supreme Court, which let the lower court's order for King stand.

But King conceded he bears some responsibility for other delays.

Issues in an unrelated business in West Virginia and his wife's death from breast cancer forced him to temporarily shift his attention away from the case, King said.

Thomas Wilkinson of the Cozen O'Connor law firm in Philadelphia has practiced law for 30 years and is past chairman of the Pennsylvania Bar Association's Civil Litigation Section. He was not familiar with the King case, but said protracted civil cases are the exception to the rule today in Pennsylvania's civil courts.

“Most counties now have a system where they issue case-management orders and assign individual judges to supervise cases. If both parties want to resolve a case, it's unlikely it will take more than two years. ... But I have heard of cases taking upwards of 20 years if they have a convoluted procedural history or judges retire or there are multiple appeals. The court will grant extensions, and sometimes there are good reasons for doing so,” he said.

Westmoreland County court administrator Amy DeMatt said protracted cases have become more and more rare in recent years.

“We have a purge process where we review cases where there has been no activity for two years,” she said. She said court officials contact counsel in such cases and if there is no further activity, they are removed from the docket.

Debra Erdley is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at 412-320-7996 or derdley@tribweb.com