Hocking College says county trying to make it look ‘nefarious’

The college continues to insist that under the terms of the nearly 30-year-old deed that transferred ownership, it has a clear right to hold onto the property.

“The facts… are very straightforward,” attorneys for the college declare in a document filed July 29 in Perry County Common Pleas Court, where the county is suing to try to regain title to the land. The commissioners, the college’s lawyers say, are “asking the court to ignore the plain, unambiguous language of the deed, as well as established rules of deed and contract interpretation, and simply decide based on the board’s pleas of drastic ‘policy implications’ that the parties intended something entirely different than what was written (in the deed).”

In 1993 the county gave slightly more than 25 acres, near the college’s Perry County campus, to the college for free. It signed an agreement to do so in 1991, then transferred the land two years later in a warranty deed. The commissioners say the clear intention was that the land should be used solely for educational purposes to benefit the public, not for commercial gain.

The college readily admits that the terms of the deed agreement included a requirement that within four years of receiving the land, it had to start building a facility on it to house governmental offices and educational activities. If the college failed to do this, title to the land would revert to the county.

The college did construct a building and parking lot on a five-acre parcel of the land within the required time period, and for the designated purpose. By doing so, the college maintains, it fully satisfied the terms of the transfer agreement. Other parts of the original 25 acres have been returned to the county, but about 15 unused acres remain in the college’s possession. It is the county’s position that use of any of the original acreage for commercial purposes voids the agreement and requires Hocking College to give back the land.

The county filed its lawsuit after the commissioners learned in March that the college was shopping the remaining acres for development, seeking a buyer, a tenant, or a private-sector partner for a commercial project.

The college filed a motion June 21, asking Hocking County Common Pleas Judge David Cain to dismiss the county’s suit, and arguing that under the explicit terms of the 1993 deed, the county has no right to take back the land. The county responded by citing the section of Ohio Revised Code that allowed the commissioners to donate the land in the first place. Under this statute, the county’s attorneys noted, county commissions are forbidden to give away land except for non-commercial, public use. Therefore, they suggested, to now use any part of the 25 acres for commercial development would retroactively violate state law.

They also warned that if Hocking College is allowed to keep the land and develop it for financial gain, this will “encourage scheming institutions” to likewise renege on their land donation agreements, and make local governments warier of entering into such deals with educational institutions. Thus a win for the college would have serious policy implications for the state, they said.

In their latest court filing, the college’s attorneys dismiss these concerns as so many red herrings.

“The board’s entire opposition focuses on trying to confuse the record with dramatic hypothetical interpretations and analogies and references to statutes on a procedure that may or may not have been improperly followed over 20 years ago in an effort to make the (college) look nefarious,” they write. ‘The deed easily could have been written to say that the college was required to continuously use all of the land for governmental or educational purposes if that was the parties’ intent.” However, they add, the deed clearly does not say this.

And when interpreting a clearly written deed like the one in this case, they say, a court should look solely to what the document actually says, rather than engaging in speculation on what the parties may have meant to say. Thus, they argue, the court should ignore the county’s request that it take into account evidence from other sources such as the Ohio statute mentioned earlier, or the minutes of the commissioners’ meeting in which the donation agreement was discussed. What this all adds up to, they insist, is that the court should throw out the county’s lawsuit as having no legal basis.

“Given that the complaint is solely predicated on the warranty deed… and the language of the warranty deed is clear and unambiguous, dismissal… is proper,” they conclude.

Email at jphillips@perrytribune.com.