Butler Prather LLP: Silicon Ranch Corporation and its contractor IEA Inc. hit with $135.5 million verdict

COLUMBUS, Ga., May 3, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Solar power developer Silicon "Ranch" Corporation ("SRC") and its contractor Infrastructure and Energy Alternatives, Inc. ("IEA") got slammed with a $135.5 million verdict yesterday as a result of intentionally polluting a downstream neighbors' property. The case was tried in federal court in Columbus, Georgia, before Hon. Clay D. Land, U.S. District Judge. 

SRC has developed over 160 solar panel facilities across the country, many of them built by IEA. This case involved one in Stewart County, Georgia, called "Lumpkin solar." SRC and IEA cleared and mass graded some 1,000 acres without first installing adequate erosion and sediment control measures. The result was what one would expect - when it rained, pollution poured downhill and downstream onto the neighbors' property, inundating wetlands with silt and sediment and turning a 21-acre trophy fishing lake into a mud hole. 

The downstream property is owned by Shaun and Amie Harris, lifelong residents of the Stewart County area. They were the plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit. Amie has been an elementary school teacher; Shaun started his own business at age 18 and runs B&S Air, Inc., which is in the reforestation business and also uses helicopters and airplanes for firefighting in western states. The Harris property was formerly known as "Kawikee Refuge."

SRC calls itself by the name "Silicon Ranch" and refers to its solar panel facilities as "solar farms" and projects images in its press releases of sheep grazing lush grass under solar panels. In reality, there is no 'ranch,' there is no farming, there are no sheep, and there is very little grass. "That was the main problem with the Lumpkin site," said Plaintiffs' lead counsel James E. Butler, Jr. of Butler Prather LLP. "For two years SRC and IEA failed to stabilize and vegetate almost a thousand acres they had mass graded - which was breaking the law."

Both the SRC property and the Harris property had previously been owned by Jim Butler, Joel Wooten, and George Fryhofer, formerly law partners together. When Wooten negotiated the sale to SRC he was promised that SRC would be a "good neighbor" and "you won't even know we're there." Before the Kawikee property was sold to Mr. And Mrs. Harris, SRC pledged that there would be "no impact to [the downstream] property from our solar development." When the first rain came after the mass grading by SRC and IEA, the once gorgeous 21-acre lake turned to the color of mud. 

There was expert testimony that SRC and IEA in fact knew what the results of their conduct would be, and that the fishery was dead, and that the lake can never be remediated unless and until the pollution by SRC and IEA is stopped.

At the end of the trial, the jury returned a compensatory damages verdict of $10.5 million and also found that punitive damages should be imposed against SRC and IEA. Then, in a second phase of the trial, financial evidence was presented to prove that SRC and IEA are each worth more than $1 billion. In its second verdict the jury found that SRC and IEA, and an IEA subsidiary called "IEA Constructors, LLC", acted with the specific intent to cause harm. The jury imposed $25 million in punitive damages against SRC, $50 million in punitive damages against IEA Inc., and $50 million against IEA's wholly owned subsidiary IEA Constructors, LLC.

The engineering firm that designed the erosion and sediment control plan for SRC and IEA, Westwood Professional Services, Inc., was also a defendant. The jury released Westwood from any liability.

"The SRC/IEA litigation and trial strategy was to blame everyone else and deny responsibility," said Plaintiffs' counsel, Dan Philyaw. "They blamed Westwood, they blamed Shaun and Amie, they blamed too much rain, and they blamed 'erodible soils.'"

At the start of the trial, SRC and IEA denied they had created a nuisance, denied they had committed any trespass, denied they were negligent, and denied they had caused any damage to the downstream property. On the ninth day of trial SRC President Reagan Farr admitted liability on the witness stand. On the twelfth day of trial the President of the IEA subsidiary IEA Constructors, LLC admitted liability on the witness stand.

In a weird twist, when it bought its property SRC had insisted that timber on the property be harvested by the prior owners, Butler and Wooten - an approach SRC's own witnesses admitted was unusual. Then, when the mass grading without adequate erosion controls unleashed pollution on the downstream neighbor, SRC and IEA blamed the prior owners who hired those who did the logging. At trial SRC and IEA sought to apportion fault to non-parties involved in the logging. The problem for SRC and IEA was there was never any evidence that logging caused erosion that caused damage to the Harris property: not a photograph, not a witness. Plaintiffs presented expert and lay witness testimony that the logging accusation was totally false. At the conclusion of the evidence, U. S. District Judge Clay D. Land granted Plaintiffs' motion for directed verdict as to the logging accusation leveled by SRC and IEA, where they claimed that non-parties shared in the fault for causing the damage.

Plaintiffs also sued for an injunction to make SRC and IEA finally fix the problems at the SRC site and stop the damage. At the conclusion of the evidence, Judge Land stated he would grant an injunction to require that no more sediment escapes the site post-development than did pre-development. The parties are to submit proposals as to the terms of an injunction.

Plaintiffs Shaun and Amie Harris were represented by Jim Butler, Dan Philyaw, and Caroline W. Schley of Butler Prather LLP, assisted by paralegals Kim McCallister and Sarah Andrews and investigator Nick Giles. Plaintiffs were also represented by Cooper Knowles of Atlanta, who was unable to attend trial.

The defendant released by the jury, Westwood, was successfully represented by Kent Stair, Melissa Bailey, and Corey Mendel of Copeland, Stair, Valz & Lovell in Atlanta. 

SRC was represented by Alycen Moss and Danielle LeJeune of Cozen O'Connor, Atlanta. IEA was represented by Charles Rogers, Sarah Carpenter, Steven Stuart, and Brent Beaver of the Smith Currie & Hancock firm, Atlanta and Washington D.C. 

"Meanness is not neighborly," Butler said in summarizing the case, "and it is a terrible litigation and trial strategy."

The verdict was Butler's ninth verdict over $100 million. No other lawyer in American history has won so many big verdicts.

Contact: James E. Butler, Jr. [email protected]; 800-242-2962

SOURCE Butler Prather LLP