Lawsuit depicting city responsible for negligence filed in court

Apr. 3—CATLETTSBURG — A civil action lawsuit filed in the Boyd County Circuit Court in March is alleging negligence by the city for property damage to a resident.

A lawsuit filed March 18 is suing the city of Catlettsburg and Light's Enterprises, Inc. for a partial collapse to Kermit Dale Pinkerton's (plaintiff) property. Stephen R. McGinnis, attorney representing Pinkerton, said "Light's and the city, jointly together" decided to leave a wall remaining from a building next door, "which abutted and touched upon the building" owned by Pinkerton.

"It was standing about 15 to 20 feet taller than my client's building, that lasted about a year and on or around, April 1, last year we had a storm that swept through Catlettsburg and the pressure of the wind blowing on that wall, particularly the top of it, caused the building to collapse, according to our engineer," McGinnis said.

"Engineers told them the wall should have never been left and should have been torn down at the same time," he said, speaking about how the city was "determined to raze the improvements" on a piece of property. "I don't know if they have hired an engineer, but ours said it's the city's and Light's Enterprises fault."

The complaint alleges that not removing the wall was a "negligent action" on the part of either or both defendants. Furthermore, the lawsuit suggests Pinkerton had to expend "significant funds" to clean up where the building had collapsed and he had been treated differently than other residents, in terms of the enforcement of the ordinance.

Since April 2023, McGinnis said Pinkerton has received a number of letters from the city.

"Since then, my client has gotten several letters from the city demanding that he hurry up and clean things up and they talk about how it makes the town look bad. They have really been picking on him," he said.

Catlettsburg has "singled" Pinkerton out over his building, McGinnis said

"There are all kinds of people in town who need to clean their property up ... even after they caused it to collapse, even though there are buildings in town in even worse shape that they don't take any action on," he said to The Daily Independent.

"We hope the court provides justice to Dale Pinkerton and compensates him for the real estate and personal property he lost due to the negligence of the defendant," he added.

According to the complaint, Pinkerton lost valuable personal property in "excess of the minimum jurisdiction" of the court. McGinnis said in Kentucky they are not allowed to specify how much money should be granted at trial. "If we were in other states, we would put the figure in there. Dale had decades worth of parts that got destroyed when the building came down; not only did he lose the building, he also lost a lot of inventory."

In addition, Pinkerton is seeking an "amount of money to compensate him for the loss of use of his property, loss profits, lost rents, damage to his property, repair to his property, cleanup costs and any and all other damages which may have resulted from the negligent conduct and damages against the city for their retaliation against him," according to the complaint.

At a regular monthly city council meeting in April 2023, Sonny Martin, city attorney, announced Catlettsburg sent the owner of the old Tri-State Plumbing building notice to tear down the structure, which partially caved in around April 1, according to previous reporting by The Daily Independent.

Multiple attempts to reach the city were not met by press time.

(606) 326-2657 — ajohnson@dailyindependent.com