Men awarded $2 million in damage suit

BY WAYNE CLARK
Senior Staff Writer

Published Thursday, August 15, 2002 10:29 AM EDT

LaFAYETTE - - At approximately 8:30 p.m. EDT Monday, a 12-member Chambers County jury returned a $2 million verdict in favor of two LaGrange, Ga., men who had claimed that an Atlanta-based concrete giant had wrongfully damaged their property.

Attorneys for Sidney A. Evans and Phillip E. Stribling argued that Williams Brothers, Inc. had "intentionally and maliciously" damaged the land in such a way that Evans and Stribling had no practical use for it once the concrete company left town.

The property at issue is located a couple of blocks behind Shoney's in Lanett's Plant City community.

The incident took place in Dec. 1996 and legal action taken against Williams Brothers (a.k.a. Blue Circle and now under the name LaFarge Building Materials, Inc.) in June 1998.

Evans and Stribling were represented by William O. "Trip" Walton III and Brenton Dean of Opelika and Jack Kirby of LaGrange. Clark Carpenter of Talladega represented Williams Brothers. Judge Howard Bryan presided over the case.

In the mid 1990s, Evans and Stribling purchased the land from WestPoint Stevens. They in turn leased it to Williams Brothers for approximately one year. Williams then built some concrete block buildings and two concrete mixing towers on the land.

The company decided not to stay in Lanett and let the lease expire but before leaving, they destroyed what they'd built, leaving an eyesore on the west side of Plant City and land Evans and Stribling couldn't use without a major investment being made to clean it up. One estimate pegged the cleanup cost at $122,000.

The destruction was an especially bitter pill to swallow for Mr. Evans. He's been in the concrete business for more than 20 years in LaGrange and was planning on using the facilities once Williams vacated the property, land he was a joint owner of.

Stribling was only 18 years old when he and Evans went in together to purchase the property. His dad is in the real estate business and thought it would be a good investment for his son. The younger Stribling today is in the real estate sales and appraisals business.

"We felt like we had a case we could prove, but we didn't know how outraged the jury would be," lead attorney Trip Walton told The Valley Times-News Tuesday afternoon.

He said he was pleased with the outcome and was especially pleased that the jury found that the $2 million should be awarded according to a 3-to-1 ratio: $500,000 for compensatory damages and $1.5 million for punitive damage.

According to Walton, the U.S. Supreme Court recently cited that 3-to-1 ratio as the ideal figure in the settlement of major lawsuits.

Walton said that, early on, the case could have been settled out of court for far less money. The company, though, never backed off the view that "we built it and we can tear it down whenever we want to."

In making their case, Walton, Dean and Kirby presented testimony from a bulldozer driver and blowtorch operator who had been involved in flattening the buildings and felling the mixing towers. Both said they'd gotten their instructions from a vice president of the company. The vice president, in turn, said the division president told him to have this work done.

"The former vice president testified that they destroyed the property to keep out the competition." Walton said.

Williams Brothers is now part of the largest building materials company in the world. Based in Paris, France, the LaFarge Group employs 83,000 people in 75 countries. In 2001, the company held the top-ranking position in cement, aggregates and concrete, roofing and gypsum. Worldwide sales totaled more than $12.3 billion last year.

"It's important to know that a company like that did something like that," Walton said of the 1996 site wrecking.

Walton said he didn't know if the company would appeal the case but suspects they will. "To these guys, money's not an issue," he said. "I anticipate they'll appeal it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Ninety-nine percent of the time a case like this will be settled out of court, but they never made any overtures to settle it. They made a decision early on for an aggressive defense and never backed off of it. They should have apologized and made some effort to make amends."

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