Supporters of Santa Monica Airport in California might draw some encouragement from across the continent. The owners of Solberg Airport in Readington, N.J., continue to win in the courtroom. Most recently, a county judge ruled on January 4 that Solberg Aviation is entitled to recover as much as $372,000 from the township for legal fees incurred in fighting an unfair zoning ordinance. This comes on top of a 2016 ruling granting the family-owned airport close to $3 million from the township to reimburse legal fees from an unsuccessful years-long effort to “condemn” and take over 624 acres surrounding the 102 acres that make up the actual airport property. Both court rulings came as a result of lawsuits filed by the Solberg family.
The current award from Superior Court Judge Yolanda Ciccone could climb even higher, as the township continues to contest the airport’s lawsuit, and legal fees continue to accrue. In further bad news for local taxpayers, the Solberg family’s attorney estimates the Township’s current legal fees at more than $386,000, and rising.
In defending against the airport's most recent lawsuit, the township maintained that its zoning ordinance, which sought to limit all aviation activity to the inner 102-acre parcel, was separate from the earlier failed attempt to acquire the 624 acres by eminent domain. Judge Ciccone disagreed, saying, “The facts before this court clearly demonstrate that the [zoning] ordinance was enacted specifically for the purpose of obtaining remaining acreage that [the township’s] condemnation action could not claim. Indeed, for all purposes beside docket number, these two matters are one and the same.”
In May 2015, Appellate Court Judge (Somerset County, New Jersey) Paul Armstrong ruled against the original attempt by the township to condemn the Solbergs’ property and acquire it in what is known as an “instant take” legal maneuver. In his official opinion on the case, Judge Armstrong wrote that the elected officials’ testimony “reveals a studied attempt to obscure the true purpose of the condemnors in the instant taking. The Court finds this testimony, as a whole, to be un-forthright, evasive, untrustworthy, argumentative, lacking credibility and therefore unworthy of belief. Moreover, the resultant lack of transparency in governmental actions of Readington Township has subverted an open political process, thus weakening the protection of all its citizens’ private property rights, including the Solberg family. That is to say the condemnation was singularly initiated to secure Township control over airport operations.”
Solberg Airport was founded in 1939 by family patriarch Thor Solberg, who later became the first to fly an airplane nonstop from America to his native Norway. The airport is currently owned and operated by his children, Thor Solberg, Jr. Lorraine Solberg and Suzy Solberg Nagle. Dating back some 10 years, plans to expand the airport’s runway to 4,950 feet from 3,000 feet are widely believed to be the incentive for the township’s takeover efforts. In 2015, the Solbergs’ attorney in the eminent domain case said in a written statement, “None of this was necessary. It was the result of the myopic view that Solberg Airport was going to become another La Guardia, being drummed into the collective psyche of too many citizens misled by the Township leadership.”