Duluth, GA. Businessman Threatens Suit Over Wal-Mart

Seller threatens $25 million suit over blocked Wal-Mart [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

So far, the battle has been played out in letters, not a courtroom.

Whether the correspondence is a prelude to a lawsuit — or a substitute — remains to be seen.

The city of Duluth has told landowner Jack Bandy and his attorney, former Gov. Roy Barnes, that it has no liability in any of the matters they detailed in an Aug. 28 letter alerting the city to Bandy’s plans to file a $25 million lawsuit.

Bandy, who wants to sell 27 acres on Peachtree Industrial Boulevard to Wal-Mart, told the city it acted improperly when it imposed a six-month moratorium on large-scale buildings in July. He said the moratorium caused him to suffer damages.

City Attorney Lee Thompson, responding in a Sept. 25 letter, said, “you claim damages in the amount of $25,000,000 but provide absolutely no basis for any claim of monetary damages whatsoever.”

Bandy says the city assured him that “the property was properly zoned for a Wal-Mart” and that he entered into a contract with Wal-Mart based on those assurances. Thompson said the city could not fully evaluate Bandy’s claim for damages without seeing his contract with Wal-Mart.

Meanwhile, on Oct. 24, the city’s zoning board will consider a couple of related appeals.

One is from Wal-Mart, which was denied building permits in August for a planned 176,305-square-foot Supercenter at the corner of Peachtree Industrial and Sugarloaf Parkway.

The other is from Smart Growth Gwinnett, a neighborhood group that objects to the city’s approval of design tweaks that the retail giant made to its plans.

Any claim of damages, Thompson wrote, couldn’t be considered until “all administrative remedies have been appropriately pursued by the interested and/or aggrieved parties.”

So what happens now?

“It’s up to them,” Thompson said, “whether they take any action at this point.”

Bandy’s lawyers couldn’t be reached for comment.

Posted by Andrew Yonki on Tuesday, October 09, 2007

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