MORGANTOWN — A lawsuit filed by a Westover landlord claims the city has stolen items from his property and is attempting to steal the property itself.
Richard Panico Sr. filed the suit in Monongalia County Circuit Court last week through his attorneys. It seeks compensatory damages, general damages, interest, attorney’s fees and other relief.
The suit also seeks an injunction stopping the city from taking, controlling or regulating the easement and preventing the city from targeting and harassing Panico.
The Dominion Post was unable to reach a Westover representative for comment Friday.
Panico owns 25-30 rental properties in the Morgan Heights subdivision of Westover, according to the suit. In March 2021, a neighbor whose property touches Panico’s, put their property up for sale. Panico’s son, former Westover Chief of Police, Richard Panico Jr., tried to buy the land and learned the neighbor built a fence extending into a “long standing and well-defined easement, owned in common by all property owners within the Morgan Heights subdivision,” and that they were attempting to sell that easement with the property.
Panico explained to the neighbor that they could not sell the easement and that his fence extended into the easement. The neighbor then called Mayor Dave Johnson, and/or city attorney Tim Stranko, with whom they had a long-standing relationship, to complain about Panico’s statements, the suit states.
Stranko then called Panico to discuss the issue, and Pancio told Stranko about the easement and the fence.
“However, rather than take action against the neighbor or permit the dispute to be resolved between the parties and through the proper channels, the City of Westover, via its code enforcement officials, announced to Mr. Panico that the Easement he has owned an interest in and used without interruption since 1954, has been deemed by the City, of its own accord, a ‘public way,’ ” the suit states.
Since then, the city has trespassed, harassed Pancio, threatened him with legal action, stolen his personal items from the easement, and is “attempting to steal the easement itself,” according to the suit.
The suit states Panico Jr. testified in a sworn deposition in an unrelated case that Johnson “has been known to use code enforcement and other city officials to illegally and unlawfully target individual citizens of Westover with whom he takes issue.”
According to a deed for one of the properties Panico owns, the easement is for the “operation, maintenance, or replacement of storm and sanitary sewers owned by the United States, noting that it may only be defeasible under certain conditions,” the suit states, adding that it does not list the city on the easement.
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