Rutland Herald

Home buyers sue over OMYA proposals

April 29, 2001
By PETER CRABTREE
Staff Writer

BENNINGTON — Irene McGrath and Stephen Schweikhart hoped to escape the pressures of living in the New York metropolitan area when they went shopping for a country house in Vermont last year.

They thought they had found what they were looking for when they were shown a clapboard building with a gambrel roof on Dutch Hill Road in Danby. The 13.6-acre property was listed as having a “mountain view/private road/walk trail.” The couple paid $286,500.

But their "quiet retreat from urban life" came with a hitch: OMYA Inc. and its proposed marble quarry and mine in Danby. If the company wins permits, as many as 80 trucks laden with ore could rumble past the couple's house daily.

The thing is, McGrath and Schweikhart claim that they learned about OMYA's plans only after they bought the property in March 2000 and moved in. One year later, they have filed a lawsuit in Bennington Superior Court against the previous owners and the real estate agents involved in the sale, accusing them of fraud for failing to disclose what they allegedly knew about the quarry and mine.

"No active, competent realtor with offices in Dorset or Manchester Center would have been ignorant of OMYA's plans and their feared consequences," the complaint reads.

Named as defendants are the listing agent, Josiah Allen Real Estate and Charles D. Mauro of Dorset; the agent who showed the property, Alfred LaTorella and ALT Inc. of Manchester Center; and the former property owners, Donald and Elizabeth Donohue of New Hampshire.

They deny the claims against them.

"I don't think the facts are going to bear out that they knew about OMYA's plans. But it's always a case-by-case determination of what needs to be disclosed to prospective purchasers," said Thomas Heilmann, the attorney for LaTorella and ALT Inc.

Andrew H. Maass, the lawyer for Mauro and Josiah Allen Inc., said his clients were not responsible for the couple's predicament.

"My client and their office handled everything completely appropriately. These people (McGrath and Schweikhart) dealt with the other agent, so you'll have to talk to him about what he did or didn't say," Maass said.

The couple's property is on the corner of Dutch Hill Road and the Danby-Pawlet Road. Although Dutch Hill is private, the latter is public and would be used by ore trucks and other heavy equipment, according to the lawsuit.

"The noise, exhaust, dust and airborne fibers from the quarry and the trucks will severely degrade the setting. The truck traffic will make vehicular access to and from the house difficult and at times potentially hazardous," the complaint reads.

McGrath and Schweikhart contend that by the end of January 2000 OMYA's plans had been "widely disseminated" through news reports and community discussions. And Mauro had allegedly been told about OMYA's plans by an out-of-state family to whom he sold property in 1998. Like McGrath and Schweikhart, that family learned about the proposed quarry only after buying land nearby, according to the lawsuit.

When the family complained that Mauro and Josiah Allen Inc. should have disclosed what they knew about OMYA, Mauro said he was ignorant of the company's plans, according to the lawsuit.

As for the listing describing the Donohues’ property as having a "mountain view/private road/walk trail," that was a "half-truth and misleading," according to the lawsuit.

The suit alleges that Mauro, LaTorella and their companies failed to comply with the rules of the Vermont Real Estate Commission. Neither Mauro nor LaTorella has ever been disciplined by the commission, according to the Vermont Secretary of State's Office.

LaTorella's attorney said he found it "interesting " that McGrath and Schweikhart had turned to his clients in an effort to sell their new house.

"The people they hired to be their agents to market it are the people they're now suing," Heilmann said. "Their complaint that our people did such terrible things to them is curious when you consider that they felt strongly enough about them that they hired them."

McGrath and Schweikhart are seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. Their attorney, James A. Dumont of Middlebury, declined to comment.