The increasingly litigious nature of American society is costing local taxpayers as counties and towns find themselves sucked into the courtroom to hash out disputes with angry residents.

The assorted arsenal of lawsuits against counties and towns in Western North Carolina range from small claims of $2,000 or less to big bucks in the neighborhood of $1 million.

In the small claims arena, Haywood County arguably takes the cake for the most frivolous lawsuit in the region — $4,500 in damages filed against the county for euthanizing an emaciated cow. Haywood County Animal Control euthanized the cow after receiving several calls from concerned neighbors that the cow was starving to death. Once euthanized, the cow was sent off for an autopsy, which revealed it suffered from severe malnutrition.

The cow’s owner, who claimed the cow wouldn’t eat and denied any charges of animal abuse, filed a suit against the county for reimbursement. Realizing it would cost more to defend the suit than settle it, the county offered the owner $1,000 for the cow. The owner wanted more. So the county upped its offer to $2,500, but that still did not satisfy the owner.

“He thought it was worth a lot more than we thought it was worth. He said it wouldn’t eat. Who wants a cow that won’t eat?” asked Jeff Norris, the county’s attorney in the case. The case is still pending.

Another far-fetched small claims case, this one in Macon County, involved a broken door. Deputies forcibly entered a home to arrest a fugitive wanted in Kentucky. The landlord sued the county for the damages to the door. The case was thrown out on grounds that the deputies were doing their duty.

“Arresting a fugitive is a governmental function,” said Rick Moorefield, the Macon County attorney.

The town of Waynesville recently won a case brought against it by a resident who claimed smoke backed up into his house through the sewer line. The town had blown smoke through the sewer lines, a standard procedure to detect leaks. The household in question had an open sewer line, allowing smoke to come up into the house. The owner claimed the smoke had caused health damages. The town argued that not only was the smoke benign, but it was the homeowner’s fault for not having a trap on their sewer connection.

Waynesville won that one, but lost another — a suit from a homeowner who claimed the town illegally took his property for a sidewalk. The town claimed it had prior right of way where the sidewalk was installed. The case went to court and the town had to fork over $20,000 for a strip of land 5 feet wide and 100 feet long.

Times are a-changing

“When I started in the early 1970s, it was really rare to have a lawsuit,” said Waynesville Town Manager Lee Galloway.

While these days towns and counties are rarely without a lawsuit of some sort pending, Bryson City and Swain County win the prize for the fewest number of outstanding lawsuits: none. While it could be luck of the draw, it could also correlate with the smaller population. The larger the county or town, the more suits they seem to face. Ron Aycock, executive director of the N.C. County Attorneys Association, said it’s only logical — the more residents there are, the greater the likelihood one of them will have a bone to pick with the government.

The motive in many lawsuits against deep-pocketed counties and towns is, well, those deep pockets. But not all are about money.

A landowner in Jackson County wants the county to remove its emergency radio antennas from their property. The property recently changed hands, and the new owner does not want to honor the county’s lease with the previous landowner to house the antennas on the property. The county claims the lease is valid even though the property changed hands. Without the radio antennas, firemen, rescue workers and deputies couldn’t communicate by radio between Sylva and Cashiers.

In such cases, local governments become vulnerable to lawsuits as they are trying to provide services to residents.

The town of Franklin is facing a $10,000 civil case from a resident who claims the town is at fault for a sewage back-up in their home. The resident claims the town’s sewer lines are both antiquated and overloaded, resulting in sewage backing up into their house for the third time in recent years.

The town’s insurance adjuster inspected the home, but claimed it wasn’t the town’s fault. The suit is pending. If the court finds the town is indeed liable, the town would then be in a position of deciding whether to take its insurance company to court to force them to pay for it.

Clean up that trash!

Counties and towns aren’t always the victims of suits, but sometimes the instigator. Local governments are increasingly turning to the courts as a last resort for enforcing ordinances.

“If the citizens expect county government to be involved in more regulatory activities such as junk cars and other things, if you have more regulatory ordinances it takes more regulatory actions to make sure those ordinances are enforced,” said Aycock, executive director for the N.C. Association of County Attorneys.

After years of wrangling with a property owner to clean up their unsightly yard strewn with junk cars, rusty gutters and building materials, the town of Waynesville forced the issue by heading to court this year.

“The options just ran out. You get to a point where there is no other recourse,” said Waynesville Town Manager Lee Galloway.

Haywood County has gone the legal route several times to enforce its junkyard ordinance, which requires fencing and vegetative screening around junk yards.

In one case, however, court-ordered fines and mandates have failed to make an impression against Denver Blaylock, the owner of a bona-fide junkyard in Cruso that has been a source of contention for years and was the prime impetous behind the creation of the ordinance.

Norris, the attorney hired to tackle the issue, said Blaylock has made sporadic, half-hearted attempts to comply, like partially fencing some but not all of the junk and planting a meager row of trees. The trees, however, were more like sticks — so small that the inspector stepped on them accidentally while surveying the property for compliance.

County commissioners this month weighed whether to go onto Blaylock’s property, bring the junkyard into compliance and then send Blaylock a bill for the work. If he doesn’t pay, the county could then legally foreclose on the property and sell it to recoup their costs. It’s not an ideal solution, however, so the county is giving Blaylock one last chance.

Macon County is also considering court action to enforce ordinances, such as erosion violations and failing septic tanks.

Big bucks at stake

While the $4,500 suit over the cow is an annoyance, lawsuits at the other end of the spectrum are serious monetary threats — such as a $1 million suit against Haywood County by a contractor.

The contractor, Handex, was hired to dig a very large hole at the Haywood County landfill for trash to go in. Handex had been awarded the job after coming in with the lowest bid at $2.1 million. By the time the job was over, Handex wanted an extra $1 million, blaming cost overruns on the county for not accurately describing what the job would entail.

It’s a classic game. Contractors bid low to get a job and then try to rack up additional charges for work they claim falls outside the scope of the original contract. The customer must decide if the overruns are fair or merely an attempt to run up profits.

“They had laid money on the table and planned to pick it back up,” surmised Haywood County attorney Chip Killian.

Meanwhile, the county filed a counter-claim against Handex for $100,000.

“They were extremely difficult to deal with during the course of the project, and they were very, very late in getting the job done,” Norris said.

The case went through a two-week trial with a final ruling that the county owed Handex an extra $200,000 and was not entitled to its $100,000 in damages. With $300,000 at stake, the county appealed the case and fared well with the appeal court, which nearly overturned the lower court’s decision. Now it is up to Handex whether to appeal.

“It could get to the point where it is a wash,” Norris said. Sometimes that’s all the county or town can hope for — successfully defending themselves.

Sometimes, the government plays offense, however. Haywood County took the Department of Transportation to court to get more money out of the DOT for two tracts it condemned from the county for a road-widening project. On one tract, the county won an additional $60,000 from DOT.

But different judges and juries make it difficult to predict outcomes. On the second tract, the county wanted $100,000 more than what the DOT had offered. But the judge — who was filling in here from Charlotte — questioned the legitimacy of the appraisers the county had lined up to testify. The DOT put its appraisers on the stand to give their version of the property’s value, but the county wasn’t allowed to counter. The DOT won.

So the county appealed. The Court of Appeals ruled in the county’s favor, sending the case back to the local court to be reheard, this time with the county’s appraisers permitted to testify. The DOT, however, appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court where it is still awaiting a ruling.

Jackson County has also bitten the bullet and launched a legal challenge that hopefully will pay for itself in long run. The county last year spent nearly $20,000 challenging Duke Power. The county claims the power company should establish a conservation trust fund to make up for its manipulation of the Tuckasegee River with seven dams for hydropower generation. If Jackson is successful, it will win its money back many times over, standing to receive tens of thousands over the next 40 years in the form of trust fund payments.