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ALPINE — Alpine City and former Alpine Mayor Don Watkins have been ordered to pay $1.7 million in a defamation and breach-of-contract lawsuit involving several construction companies.
The lawsuit stems from development disputes that played out over nearly two decades, according to court documents filed in 4th District Court in Provo.
The lawsuit lists Patterson Construction, Inc., Box Elder Development, LC and several other construction companies as plaintiffs in the case. It was initially filed in 2014.
After a nine-day trial, a jury ordered Watkins and Alpine City pay $1,756,000 to the companies, according to a jury verdict dated June 12.
Watkins could not be reached for comment on Thursday. Alpine Mayor Troy Stout was out of town for a family matter and could not immediately comment on the suit.
The disagreements took place from 1990 to 2011, according to the court documents. The suit alleges that the city refused to annex, approve or provide city services to certain developments.
Watkins was a City Council member in the 1990s and early 2000s, according to the lawsuit. He also was a real estate developer and property investor in Alpine.
He served as mayor from 1998 to 2002, and again from 2014 to 2016 when he resigned two years before his term expired to take another job.
The lawsuit also found that city officials made several defamatory statements, specifically several in relation to subdivisions proposed near Box Elder Canyon and potential drainage issues the subdivisions might create.
The suit alleged that Watkins circulated a newsletter to Alpine residents in 2014 in which he discussed potential dangers of developments that Patterson Construction had planned. The comments made in the newsletter about the Patterson family were false and misleading, and presented them in a false light, the lawsuit alleges.
The suit also alleges that Alpine City violated the terms of two settlement agreements with Patterson Construction, one in 1992 and another in 2011. The city agreed to provide municipal water access to two subdivisions that Patterson Construction was working to develop at the time, according to the lawsuit.
The city didn’t fulfill the contracts, the suit claims.
As a result of the alleged defamatory statements and contract violations, the lawsuit initially asked for monetary damages of more than $10 million.
Special Verdict by KSLcom on Scribd
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Jacob Klopfenstein
