A lengthy legal brouhaha that has pitted the owners of a former dairy farm against the Town of Tunbridge over the maintenance of public trails is headed to the Vermont Supreme Court.
The case is set to be heard sometime this spring, either by a panel of three justices, or the full Supreme Court.
The plaintiffs in the suit, John Echeverria and Carin Pratt, have owned the 325-acre Dodge Farm property since 2015. The couple lives in Strafford and rents the property to a Tunbridge resident.
Echeverria and Pratt argue the Tunbridge Selectboard lacks the authority to maintain or designate appropriate use of legal trails in town. The couple has taken particular issue with bicyclists using a trail that runs through their private property.
Echeverria is a professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School, where he teaches property law. The website for the Federalist Society lists him as a contributor to the conservative organization. Echeverria and Pratt moved to the Upper Valley about a decade ago from the Washington, D.C. area.
The couple has brought their case against the town to Vermont Superior Court on two occasions, but both times were rebuffed by Judge Elizabeth Mann for lack of “ripeness.”
In her dismissal of the initial lawsuit in December 2022, Mann wrote, “mere fears that the town may one day seek to maintain the trails on the Dodge Farm are not sufficient.”
Echeverria contends that since the earlier litigation, the town has instituted new policies regarding trail use and maintenance that have heightened the case’s “ripeness.”
“We’re trying to keep up with the town’s evolving position,” he said in a recent interview. “The case is dismissed as unripe, means it’s not ripe now, but it might be ripe tomorrow, or next month. And now we have additional things to say.”
Echeverria added that he and his wife have offered to settle the case, if the town were to move the trail to an alternative bike route that avoids the Dodge Farm homestead. That conversation “has been going on for awhile and hasn’t yet borne fruit,” he said.
The back-and-forth now involves a direct appeal from Echeverria on the dismissal of his second suit as unripe, and a cross appeal by the town arguing that the second suit is barred by the result of the first suit.
The Supreme Court of Vermont will “likely will rule that it’s unripe,” said Gary Mullen, chairman of the Tunbridge Selectboard, in a recent interview.
The state’s highest court could then send the case back to a lower court, he added.
“It just really seems like this is never going to end,” Mullen said.