Road dispute leads to federal lawsuit
NEW HANOVER >> An East Moyer Road couple’s dispute with the township over who owns Grandview Avenue has now wound its way into federal court.
In a civil rights case filed last month, Maria Peet and James Holl contend that the township’s insistence that it owns Grandview Avenue, a small alley that connects North Charlotte Street and Moyer Road, constitutes a taking of their property without compensation.
Township Manager Jamie Gwynn indicated Thursday that township officials will not comment on the legal matter.
According to evidence submitted with the latest suit by Jerry Chalphin, the couple’s lawyer, minutes from a township supervisors’ meeting in 1954 show the township specifically adopting a resolution against taking ownership of the road when it was offered after the state abandoned the road.
The resolution reads: “[The road] proposed to be abandoned as a state highway by the Secretary of Highways of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania shall not be accepted or taken over by the said Board of Township Supervisors to be maintained as a township road, and that the said part of said state highway shall be declared to be vacated by written order of the Secretary of Highways
of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania so that thereafter the part so vacated shall be closed to public use and travel and shall no longer be a public road.”
Moreover, the deed to the home Peet and Holl share with her three children includes a survey showing their parcel includes the portion of the road nearest to the intersection with East Moyer Road.
Two more recent surveys confirm that finding.
Nevertheless, trash trucks, septic trucks, neighbors and school buses continue to drive the length of the road, driving, in essence, through the couple’s property, they contend.
“It’s just been a nightmare, it’s been a terrible experience. It’s been three very long years,” said Peet, who moved with Holl into this, the first house they’ve owned, after living in a townhouse in Douglass (Mont.).
“We just wanted some peace and privacy,” she said.
Instead tractor-trailers, heavy construction equipment and other vehicles drive through their property on a regular basis.
To make matters worse, just above their home, Grandview Avenue takes a sharp 90-degree curve making pulling in and out of their garage dangerous.
“Just the other day I was getting my mail and a trash truck comes around the corner just as another car tries to pull in from Moyer Road and there I am standing between them in my driveway. I could have been killed,” Peet said Thursday.
The dispute has been going on for about three years and has generated a long list of county court filings. After it began, Peet said the township removed “No Thru Traffic” signs that had stood at the road’s entrance for years.
“The township has never worked with us. I’ve lived in lots of places and I have never been so treated poorly anywhere as I have been here,” Peet said.
And, after Peet called Waste Management and informed the company the trash trucks could not drive on her property anymore, she was told by someone there that the township sent the company a letter saying Grandview is a public road and the trash trucks could use it.
The township has even sent police officers to insist the couple stop taking action to protect their property.
“I’ve been through this just like you have with my crazy neighbor and you’re just going to have to bite your freakin’ tongue until it goes through the courts,” now-retired police Sgt. William Moyer can be heard telling Peet during a confrontation in her driveway on May 16, 2019, that was captured on her security camera.
“He stalked me. The footage shows him driving past my property again and again until I got home,” said Peet.
In the video, Moyer tells Peet she must stop calling the companies that run trash and septic trucks down the road and telling them they cannot use it where it crosses her property.
“You’re just going to have to bite your freakin’ tongue until it goes through the courts.”
— William Moyer, former New Hanover Police sergeant addressing Maria Peet in her driveway.
“In my opinion, before all this is over, this is going to cost the township and its taxpayers a whole bunch of money.”
— Jerry Chalphin, plaintiff’s lawyer
“It’s just been a nightmare, it’s been a terrible experience. It’s been three very long years.”
— Maria Peet
“Don’t put yourself in a position where I will come back here and arrest you and your boyfriend. I will not hesitate,” Moyer tells Peet on the video.
“That’s the only warning I’m going to give you and that’s right from my chief. My chief wanted to come down here,” said Moyer, who raised his voice several times on the 2-minute48-second recording and at one point told Peet “I’m beginning to think there’s something mentally wrong with you.”
Moyer told Peet as he returned to his police car, “this is a public road and it remains a public road until the courts say it’s not a public road and you have a court order that says everybody else has to stay off of it,” he said.
But you would be hardpressed to find an official state or township map that lists Grandview Avenue as a public road. The township has been unable to produce one, according to the lawsuit.
The road map posted on New Hanover Township’s website does not label Grandview Avenue as a public road, or even label it at all, simply indicating its location linking North charlotte Street and East Moyer Road with a thin black line.
And PennDOT’s 2020 map shows Grandview without naming it, labeling it only “other road,” not “township road” as other roads are named, according to the lawsuit.
The filing also notes that in 2015, then-township manager Kevin Tobias wrote to the former owner of the property that “the Township has considered our [sic] options and the most logical conclusion is to abandon the roadway as we have no legal obligation to maintain it, and will not maintain a private or partially private roadway when we are not allowed access. The township has in good faith maintained this section of roadway and been performing the property maintenance of this roadway for years, without having ever owned this roadway.”
On Dec. 14, 2018, the suit contends the township “covered the portion of Grandview Avenue that encroaches on the premises with ground stone or a tailings-like material and widened on both sides the portion of Grandview Avenue that intersects with Moyer Road,” evidently “obliterating” a survey marker in the ground indicating the edge of Peet’s property.
That action, and the heavy truck traffic, appear to be damaging the foundation of the home, which is closer to Grandview Avenue than any of the other homes with frontage there.
If it all seems a bit of a muddle, it appears the township is confused as well. Chalphin pointed out two separate filings by the township that appear to be contradictory.
In one filing, attorney John Gonzalez, who is representing New Hanover in the matter and who also conducted the investigation into claims of racism in the police department, writes that “Grandview Avenue is a public road, owned and maintained” by the township.
In a response to another filing, Gonzalez writes “the property was not in possession of New Hanover Township.”
Although the federal suit does not cite an amount for the damages the couple claims to have endured, Chalphin said “it is in excess of $50,000,” adding, “in my opinion, before all this is over, this is going to cost the township and its taxpayers a whole bunch of money.”