Verizon Denies It Breached Pa. Funicular Easement Agreement
Cambria County, Pennsylvania, wrongly alleges in its complaint that many portions of the telephone facilities and conduit in an easement under Verizon’s control along the Inclined Plane funicular connecting the city of Johnstown to the borough of Westmont are in…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
disrepair (see 2306020001), said Verizon’s memorandum Tuesday (docket 3:23-cv-00108) in U.S. District Court for Western Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh in support of its motion to dismiss. Verizon “is committed to maintaining its facilities along the Inclined Plane and has and will continue to make such repairs as are necessary,” it said. But the county’s “true reason” for bringing its lawsuit is to force Verizon to pay a fair-market rent for its continued use of the easement “for which it has already bargained and provided sufficient consideration, and which remains valid and binding,” it said. All of the county’s “asserted causes of action fail as a matter of law,” it said. Plaintiffs allege in Count I that Verizon breached the subject easement agreement by failing to “maintain” its facilities within the easement. The easement agreement “conveys to Verizon the right -- and not the obligation -- to maintain its facilities,” it said. “Nowhere does the agreement say that Verizon has a duty to make the repairs which could be breached or that an alleged failure negates Verizon’s easement rights as defined in the agreement,” it said. The county “improperly and inexplicably” seeks an award of damages for the nonexistent breach and for the court to rewrite the agreement and order additional payments from Verizon “not originally bargained for and not in any way associated with the purported breach,” it said. The county not only failed to state a claim for breach of contract, but also seeks a form of relief “that fails as a matter of law,” it said.