Family wins $15 million settlement from Clark County

A Las Vegas family that missed out on a chance to develop land near McCarran International Airport and blamed airspace restrictions will receive nearly $15 million from Clark County, an attorney for the family said Tuesday.

The money represents the outcome of lawsuit filed 16 years ago by the Heers family, former owners of the Vacation Village Hotel and Casino.

The family lost the property to foreclosure, and their dream to redevelop it with three, seven-story hotel towers, after airspace restrictions were imposed on the land to accommodate jet traffic on a proposed runway at McCarran.

The lawsuit asserted the airspace restrictions amounted to a taking of the property, which would require the county to pay compensation.

In 2005, U.S. District Court Judge Clive Jones agreed, awarding the family $10.1 million.

Clark County appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which in July upheld Jones' decision that the restrictions equated to a taking. The ruling made room to recalculate the amount of damages, and further arguments over the amount occurred in January.

Paul Ray, attorney for the family, said the county could have saved taxpayers millions of dollars had it not fought against the lawsuit so long and hard in court.

"At that point, they would have taken the $10 million. When they won the cross appeal, that's when they got more," Ray said.

Kirk Lenhard, an attorney for the county, defended the way the case was handled.

"It is a gross distortion of what happened. A gross distortion," Lenhard said of the suggestion that the county would have saved money settling earlier. He said the final amount followed two demands from plaintiffs in December, one for $85 million and another for $50 million.

"The county had no choice but to go to trial. But quite frankly, the result at trial was significantly less than the demand," Lenhard said.

He also disputed the plaintiffs' characterization of the payout as a settlement, saying a better description would be an agreement to a judgment.