Wood River attorney Thomas Maag addressed arguments about a land ownership dispute in a lawsuit alleging “vile contamination” by wrecked cars littering a Pontoon Beach property when he gave a colorful history of land ownership beginning with the Earth’s formation.
Maag filed an amended complaint on July 8 after Madison County Circuit Judge Sarah Smith granted Insurance Auto Auctions’ motion to dismiss. The amended complaint was filed on behalf of Trisha Bell, individually and as sole known heir and executor of the estate of Gary Wright, deceased.
Maag began with a brief “history of ownership of the land” in Bell’s amended complaint.
He wrote, “In the beginning, the Earth was void and without form, but ultimately came into being, and ultimately, the land at issue in this case came into being. When the land that is at issue in this case came into being, it was not ‘owned’ in the modern sense by anyone. Ultimately, the European powers made land claims in what is now Illinois, which included the property at issue.”
“That through the course of the centuries, various land conveyances were made, placing the property into the Wright Illinois Land Trust, which, in 2018, transferred ownership of the property to Gary Wright, until his death, when the property either transferred to his daughter, Trisha Bell, or shortly in time will so transfer,” he added.
Maag added that it is currently unclear whether Bell is the fee simple owner or whether the property remains technically the property of Wright’s estate. Bell is the sole heir of her father’s estate.
Bell’s original complaint was filed on March 17.
Insurance Auto Auctions filed a motion to dismiss on April 26 through attorney Michael Schag of Heyl Royster Voelker & Allen PC in Edwardsville.
“This court may infer that plaintiff’s complaint is premised on breach of plaintiff’s lease agreement with IAA, yet plaintiff’s complaint does not state a claim for breach of contract, nor does it articulate any other actionable conduct by IAA, and plaintiff does not attach the lease agreement to the complaint,” Schag wrote. “Consequently, the complaint is legally insufficient on its face as plaintiff has not stated a claim for breach of contract.”
The defendant argues that Bell fails to show she has an ownership interest in the property at issue or that she is trustee of Wright’s land trust.
Schag wrote that Insurance Auto Auctions decided not to continue its lease in October 2020 and conducted an environmental survey and walkthrough with the landowner’s representatives before vacating the premises located near the city limits of Granite City and Pontoon Beach.
The defendant also seeks to strike the plaintiff’s punitive damages request.
Bell filed a response in objection to the motion to dismiss on May 3 through Maag, who wrote that the lawsuit is not brought as a contract case.
“As the contract was entered into about 20 years ago, plaintiff no longer has a copy, and while plaintiff may wish to amend in the future to ad (sic) such a county, present, she has not done so. Thus, the primary arguments of the defendant fail on their face. It is, instead, a trespass case,” Maag wrote.
“The bottom line is that defendant put the waste on plaintiff’s property, and left it there without consent,” he added. “It is not alleged that this was an accident.”
Maag also wrote that while it is unclear if Bell owns the property individually or in her capacity as trustee of the land trust, she does own the property “one way or the other.”
“Taken to its logical extreme, under defendant’s argument, an owner of property would have to get a title report on every parcel of property before filing a report, showing a land grant from the King of England prior to 1776, or a land patent from the United States Government since 1776, and every assignment since then, in order to bring any case involving real estate,” Maag wrote. “While the undersigned has dealt with real estate, in which such a land patent was available, it is disingenuous to say it is required in a run of the mill trespass case.”
“In addition, claiming to be a trustee is not a legal conclusion, it is a factual statement, like saying the counsel for defendant is a lawyer or that the assigned judge on this case is a judge,” he added.
Maag further argued that count II seeking punitive damages should not be stricken because the defendant’s alleged damages were not accidental.
“No literate person could construe, reasonably, or not, Count II as any sort of ‘negligence’ claim, with a straight face,” he wrote.
Smith granted Insurance Auto Auctions’ motion to dismiss the original complaint on July 1 and gave Bell time to amend her complaint.
The amended complaint alleges that in about the year 2000, Insurance Auto Auctions (IAA) took physical possession of certain real estate owned by Wright located at 4289 State Route 162 in Pontoon Beach. When the defendant took possession of the land, it was not contaminated by any foreign substances, the suit states. The defendant allegedly used the property to store wrecked vehicles, pending their disposal by various insurance companies.
The suit states that neither Wright, Bell nor her predecessors were allowed onto the property and did not know the condition of the property. The property was surrounded by a large, tall fence that blocked viewing from outside and prevented inspection on the inside, the suit states.
Then in 2020, Insurance Auto Auctions allegedly began the process of leaving the location. Bell had access to the property in early 2021. After walking onto the property, she claims she found “thousands of small vehicle parts dotting the landscape, and thousands of unidentifiable pieces of trash dotting the landscape, and chemical contamination caused by leaking petroleum distillates that leaked from the stored vehicle.”
“That the above described contaminating items are all owned by defendant, having been placed there while defendant was renting the property, and have not been removed. In essence, defendant has abandoned onto plaintiff’s property its waste products,” the suit states.
Specifically, Maag wrote that the defendant intentionally contaminated the property in an effort to avoid paying cleanup costs. For example, Insurance Auto Auctions allegedly dumped car parts into a creek behind the remaining facility.
Bell argues that it would cost between $150,000 and $2.5 million to clean up the property, “assuming no unanticipated contamination, with the likely price tag of between $600,000 and $750,000.”
Insurance Auto Auctions is accused of failing to take reasonable steps to prevent damaging the property, failing to remove contamination on the property and failing to restore the property to its pre-rental condition.
Bell seeks punitive damages, $2.5 million in compensatory damages for cleanup costs, attorney’s fees and all other court costs.
Madison County Circuit Court case number 21-L-340