Wal-mart Suit Expands As 3 Parties
Agree To Be Included As Defendants
By Scott C. Boyd
(July 2010 Civil War News)

ORANGE, Va. – Retail giant Wal-mart, developer JDC Ventures LLC, and property owner 3 & 20 Limited Partnership have all agreed to be added as defendants in the lawsuit brought by preservationists to prevent a Wal-mart Supercenter from being built at the Wilderness battlefield in Orange County, according to two lawyers in the case.

So far, the lawsuit has involved six residents of Orange and Spotsylvania Counties along with the Friends of Wilderness Battlefield (FoWB) and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, all pitted against the Orange County Board of Supervisors (BOS) as the sole defendant.

The next court date is July 13 at 1:30 p.m. when a scheduling conference for the case will be held and a date for the trial is expected to be set.

A host of individuals and organizations, including prominent Virginia officials and more than 250 historians, had asked Wal-mart and the BOS that the store be built elsewhere in Orange County, away from the battlefield, without success.

The BOS triggered the lawsuit when, on Aug. 25, 2009, it approved the special use permit (SUP) required for the 138,000-square-foot Wal-mart store to be built at the intersection of State Routes 3 and 20.

This location is considered the gateway to the Wilderness battlefield, where Gens. Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant first met in battle in May 1864.

The lawsuit was filed on Sep. 23, 2009, in Orange County Circuit Court.

The National Trust was dropped from the case when Orange County Circuit Court Judge Daniel R. Bouton ruled this past April 29 that the national group lacked standing. This was in response to the Board of Supervisors’ motion to dismiss the case due to an alleged lack of standing by all of the plaintiffs.

That allowed the lawsuit to continue with the six individuals and the FoWB as plaintiffs.

On May 6, the plaintiffs filed a motion to add the three additional parties as defendants in the legal action.

“Clearly this litigation implicates the interests of Wal-mart and the landowner and developer. We did not believe it appropriate for them to sit on the sidelines instead of being defendants in the court,” said Robert D. Rosenbaum, attorney for the plaintiffs (with Arnold & Porter LLP in Washington, D.C., working pro bono), as he explained why he filed the motion to add the defendants to the case.

Bradshaw Rost (with Tenenbaum and Saas PC in Chevy Chase, Md.), attorney for developer JDC Ventures, agreed that his client should be included as a defendant.

He said “frankly [it] should have been done from the inception of the case. This affects a lot of people other than just the plaintiff in this matter.”

Rost added, “It’s only fair that all the people that are affected by it be involved in the case.”

Neither the attorney or the regional spokesman for Wal-mart or the landowner’s attorney responded to email and telephone requests for comment.

Both Rosenbaum and Rost confirmed, however, that all three proposed additional defendants signed the consent order to be added as defendants and sent it to Judge Bouton for his signature on June 3. As of press time, the judge had not yet signed the order.

The only official defendant in the case so far, the BOS, replied on May 17 to the motion to add the three additional defendants to the case.

BOS attorney Sharon E. Pandak (with Greehan, Taves, Pandak & Stoner PLLC in Woodbridge, Va.) wrote to the court that the BOS did not object to adding the three additional defendants.

“Plaintiffs have finally recognized that these people and businesses are directly impacted by Plaintiffs’ challenge to the Special Use Permit issued for their respective property and businesses,” Pandak stated in the reply to the motion.

“Wal-mart certainly has a stake in the outcome of the lawsuit and their presence is long overdue,” said Zann Nelson, President of the FoWB.

“It is difficult to have substantive discussions, or for that matter to be held accountable, when one is invisible, perhaps even hiding behind a mass media guise of concern for Americans,” she said.

“It is time for Wal-mart to answer the question, ‘Why must Americans sacrifice their patriotism and heritage for a cheap pair of underwear?’”