Developer Tommy Spinosa says he is working on a solution to a recent First Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against him that could theoretically force him to raze several homes in the middle of Rouzan, his traditional neighborhood development in Southdowns.
Spinosa declines to say what the solution might be or whether his attorneys plan to appeal the April 26 ruling to the Louisiana Supreme Court. But he says no one in the TND is going to lose their home.
“No judge is going to make someone tear down their house—you know that,” Spinosa says. “There are several solutions and we intend on getting this resolved quickly.”
It is unclear, however, whether the plaintiffs in the case will be amenable to the developer’s proposed solution.
Spinosa’s attorneys decline to comment.
The stakes in the long-running case are high. Overturning a 2015 decision by 19th Judicial District Court Judge Janice Clark, the First Circuit ruled that as many as six homes in Rouzan were developed on property that Spinosa did not have the legal right to build on: a servitude that connected Glasgow Avenue to two houses on a five-acre tract in the middle of Rouzan that are not actually part of the TND.
The two houses and five acres were bequeathed to the Welch and Hoover families in 2003 by the land’s original owner, Mary Ford. Upon Ford’s death, the remaining 119 acres of her property were sold to Spinosa. The Welch and Hoover families have been fighting Spinosa since he began developing the TND, and in 2012 filed suit over their right to a 30-foot-wide servitude that connected their properties to Glasgow.
But Spinosa tore up the roadway and built homes on the property, forcing the Welch and Hoover families to snake through the development to access the road, in violation of state law, according to the First Circuit ruling.
“Plaintiffs possessed rights to a conventional 30-foot wide servitude of passing from their property to Glasgow Avenue,” the ruling notes, “and (Spinosa) disturbed plaintiffs’ right to this servitude.”
The ruling seems to suggest that if Spinosa builds a new 30-foot-wide road that provides the Welch and Hoover properties with direct and easy access to Glasgow, it would satisfy the requirements of the state property law.
Whether it would satisfy the plaintiffs, however, is another matter. Their attorney, Alex St. Amant, says his clients are playing hardball.
“My clients, even though they feel very poorly about this for the homeowners now living on the disputed property, don’t feel any obligation to those people,” he says. “Those folks will have to suffer … because the city-parish and the developer did them harm by allowing this development to go forward in violation of state law.”
The First Circuit ruling also remands the matter to the trial court to determine financial damages and to work out a timeline for restoring the proper servitude to the Hoover and Welch homes. St. Amant suggests the matter will be costly.
“The developer is going to have to come in and pay damages for their misbehavior in blocking us,” he says. “The city-parish, too. They allowed this to happen.”
—Stephanie Riegel
