Lehigh-Northampton Airport Authority ended its two-decade losing streak with WBF developers this week when a Lehigh County judge sided with the authority's calculations of how much it owed developers for taking land in the 1990s.
For the authority, it's a rare, and perhaps only, win in the case, but one that will save the authority $567,000 in interest payments on the $26 million court judgment handed down in 2008.
The two-decade court case was a complex battle, but this final dispute came down to a relatively simple difference of opinion: The authority argued the payments it made on the judgment over the past five years should have come entirely off the principal of the debt, while WBF argued those payments should have gone first toward paying interest, before being applied to the principal.
WBF Associates attorney Kevin Fogerty called the authority's calculations a mathematical "shell game," but President Judge Edward D. Reibman decided it was perfectly legal.
"The judge agreed with our position, which is that the payments go first to principal and then to the interest," said Robert Freedberg, authority solicitor. "It would be nice if we could all pay our mortgage that way."
The authority shouldn't spend that money just yet, because Fogerty is not convinced. He intends to take the case to the Commonwealth Court of Appeals.
"We respectfully disagree with Judge Reibman," Fogerty said. "It's just not how anyone I know calculates debt payments."
The interest fight is a rare win in a battle in which the authority has most certainly lost the war. It dates back to 1994, when the authority made public a master plan that included a potential runway across 632 acres of property in East Allen and Allen townships, wher WBF Associates was planning a golf course community.
WBF sued in Lehigh County Court, arguing that the authority's plan scared away potential investors and, in effect, made the land undevelopable. A judge agreed, deeming that the authority condemned the land. The case wound through the courts for years, with the authority losing at every turn, until a judge not only determined that the authority had to pay WBF $26 million for the land, but in 2011 gave it five years to do it.
The annual payments on that debt prompted the fight over how the interest should be calculated. Since making its last payment in January, the authority had held the $567,000 in a segregated account, awaiting Reibman's decision.
Still, a lengthy history that hasn't always gone the authority's way tells Authority Executive Director Charles Everett Jr. to hold off on the celebration.
The judge's order gave the authority 20 days to provide an exact account of how much money is at stake, and then Fogerty will have 20 days to file his appeal.
"Certainly we have a long list of projects wher that money could be spent," Everett said. "But it's not time to make any definitive plans for it. Not yet."
