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CASE STUDY UNDER THE METROPOLITAN RIVER PROTECTION ACT, ALSO CALLED MRPA OR MERPA IN FORSYTH COUNTY, GEORGIA
Posted by: euser
January 31, 2009
Topic: Georgia Metropolitan River Protection Act, MRPA or MERPA for the Chattahoochee

One recent case being handled by Brockman & Teague, LLC involves a plaintiff who owned 4 acres of land in South Forsyth County, Georgia within the Chattahoochee River Protection Buffer.  The property was located adjacent to a vacant lot.  The plaintiff saved for years to build his family home after seeking out an area where the law protected privacy and provided a buffer of trees between houses. He lived next to the river with his family as affluent neighbors entered the area and began to build large homes around him.

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The Equal Credit Opportunity Act
Posted by: euser
January 21, 2009
Topic: Enforcement of Guaranties

 Banks are aggressive in enforcement of  loan guranties against builders and developers.  While generally such provisions are enforceable, defenses may exist.

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Equity Stripping or Foreclosure Rescue Scams
Posted by: euser
December 21, 2008
Topic: Foreclosure and Real Estate Services Scams

This post deals with patterns of predatory rescue services aimed at families in financial distress.   The example used deals with a service that targets a fictional family with substantial equity in its home who, but defaulted on its home loan due to unemployment.  

Tough economic times have led to a cottage industry of a new type fraud aimed at distressed homeowners facing foreclosure or the need to sell their homes. The market for real estate has become extremely thin with few buyers and many sellers. Some newly formed real estate businesses have started aggressively marketing themselves as offering rescue services whereby they will buy the distressed homeowner's house or arrange to lease it. What they are really offering is to strip any equity in the home while using the distressed homeowner's existing mortgage loan in the homeowner' name.

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The Effect of Local Ordinances on Association Responsibility for Stormwater Management
Posted by: euser
September 05, 2008
Topic: Soil, Erosion and Drainage Law

Association responsibility for stormwater management

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The Relationships between Developers, their Engineers, and Water
Posted by: euser
May 02, 2008
Topic: Soil, Erosion and Drainage Law

Author: J. Stuart Teague, Cumming Real Estate Lawyer

Water from storms can be a destructive force when it is channelled and concentrated.  Land development activities often results in the regrading of topograpy, which changes natural contours.  Also, development of roads and construction of buildings result in creation of hard surfaces that will not aborb water.  Together with the changes in grade, addition of impervious surfaces to land result in a change in the way rain runs off property.

Land development codes require developers and builders to control the flow of stormwater.  In the planning stage, engineers employ methods to measure natural flows and project them against future flows resulting from development plans.  Development consultants and engineers then design structures and piping to collect and channel stormwater flows.  Theoretically, the plans channel the flows into basins and detention ponds that slow the flows so they do not cause erosion on downstream properties.

People are conditioned to trust the opinions and methods of engineers and technicians.  We assume that because land surveyors and engineers hold licenses, they therefore have the best interests of the public and neighbors of their clients in mind when they do their planning.  Reality is a little different.

The methods employed by land development consultants are easily manipulated, imprecise, and dependent on the integrity of the consultants.   One method employed for smaller developments of less than 25 acres in size in Georgia that is used to estimate the impact of stormwater flows by development of raw land with streets and impervious surfaces is called the rational method.   Like statistics, the rational method can be manipulated to say what the user wants.  Papers have been written criticizing this method, its out of date science, and imprecise results.  It has been called the method of "voodoo hydrology."  Yet, if you look at the Forsyth County Addendum to the Georgia Stormwater Manual adopted in Forsyth County, Georgia as part of its Unified Development Code (the UDC), you will see that the County accepts this methodology as a legitimate way to measure and calculate velocity and volumes of stormwater flows for development projects in the County.   However, it is not the county's fault that it uses this method since its an accepted method in the State.

Consultants are faced with the problem of satisyfing the developers that hire and pay them, and it is my suspicion that they feel pressure to save their clients costs where possible.  Also, it is surprising how many consultants are not well versed in the laws with which they have to comply regarding protection of neighboring properties.  Many land consultants I have deposed make the assumption that all they have to do is follow the land development codes, Georgia Water Quality Control Act, and Clean Water Act.  They assume, sometimes in an aggressive defensive posture, that if they employ an accepted methodology like the rational method of estimating stormwater flows, their developer's project is immune from problems. 

That is not the law in the State of Georgia.  The law is actually quiet different.  No person in Georgia can take an action that has the effect of causing an annoyance or inconvenience in another person's use ad enjoyment of their land.  There is nothing in the law of liability that insulates a developer from bearing responsibility for problems a developer causes simply because his paid consultant has employed methods to obtain land development approvals by county officials.  For example, a developer cannot strip a site of all its tree cover, add streets and densely packed houses, and then divert the water into a stormwater detention pond that points a pipe into the back yard of an adjacent homeowner.  The fact that a developer has paid some engineering firm tens of thousands of dollars to demonstrate the pipe will decrease the velocity of predevelopment flows by "10%" will not protect the developer from responsibility for the problems it causes.  If the discharge causes problems for the lower riparian owner, then any person that controlled the actions leading to the nuisance will be liable udner Georgia law.     

Of course this doesn't mean that all developers and their consultants are bad.  Some seem genuinely interested in ethically earning a profit without hurting their neighbors.  Also, this discussion doesn't mean that all landowners who sue developers for a nuisance are entitled to compensation.  Sometimes the adjacent landowners are at fault for blocking a natural drainage and have literally caused their own harm.  However, it is truly remarkable how many devleopers take it for granted that they can get away with creating stormwater problems simply because they paid an engineering firm for plans that pass muster with a local development department.    

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