In a stunning loss for Rockaway Beach, a judge has ruled that the Oregon coast town must pay $213,000 to a beachfront property owner who has fought for years to stop his vacation home from getting washed away by winter storms.

In an order Wednesday, Tillamook County Circuit Judge Jonathan Hill cited a state law that allows him to award legal costs to homeowner Tai Dang if the city acted in ways that were “reckless, willful, malicious, in bad faith or illegal.”

The judge found that the city wasn’t “objectively reasonable” in its prolonged fight against Dang. He awarded Dang about $201,000 in fees for his attorneys and $12,000 in other litigation costs.

The judge cited glaring problems with the way Rockaway Beach handled Dang’s case -- first by granting Dang permits to build the house on that precise spot of beachfront property in 2008, then years later flipping its position and saying Dang couldn’t repair damage to the home from winter storms because the city now believed he built too close to the ocean.

The judge noted the city brushed off the impassioned warnings of then-City Council member Mardi Wing, who in 2016 emailed the city manager at the time, Lars Gare, that the continuing battle was wrong.

“(F)rankly I am shocked that it has even gotten as far as it did,” Wing wrote. “... The real issue is that the city issued a permit and then refused to stand behind it.”

By then, Dang had already been trying for a year to install a permanent wall of riprap to form a protective buffer between the ocean and his home. But because the city wouldn’t sign off on the barrier, the state -- which has the final word on riprap installation -- said no. Riprap often is a pile of rock.

Wing wrote: “If he loses his home, no one is going to want to invest in RB. There will be a negative impact on the surrounding property owners’ value and anyone in this city that has ever received a permit should run. Buyer beware. You can’t trust the city.”

Wing then shared a prediction that has, at least in light of the rulings so far, turned out to be true.

“If this goes to court, the city will lose. I guarantee it,” Wing said. “And the public needs to be made aware that we are the ones that are going to pay for it.”

Attorneys representing Rockaway Beach, John Putman and Gerald Warren, didn’t respond Thursday to a request for comment or a question about whether the city would appeal the judge’s award.

The city had argued Dang’s Portland area attorneys, Wendie Kellington and Jonathan Radmacher, were charging too much at $365 per hour and $390 per hour respectively. But the judge disagreed, saying that’s the median rate for attorneys who specialize in real estate, land use and environmental law.

Radmacher told The Oregonian/OregonLive that Rockaway Beach did things that escalated the costs. For example, Radmacher said Kellington drove from the Portland area to Tillamook County to attend a court hearing for the case only to learn upon arrival that the hearing wasn’t going to happen because the city attorneys had decided they wanted a different judge.

Dang and two other co-owners -- Hue Le and Tue Nguyen -- built the six-bedroom house as a place for their families to gather. But as their children grew older, they turned to renting it out to cover their expenses.

The sand bluff between the home and the ocean started eroding in the 1980s, possibly earlier, according to a geologist’s report. Dang said when the trio built the home in 2008 and 2009, there was still a sizable bluff that wasn’t eroding fast. But by 2014, a geologist wrote in a report that the erosion had rapidly accelerated to as much as 10 feet per year.

Dang, on behalf of his interests and those of Le and Nguyen, began his long struggle to install riprap in 2015. This past winter, Dang won a pair of victories.

In December, the judge ruled that the city must allow Dang to repair his home. The back decks had been on the verge of collapsing from recent winter storms. Waves also washed out the basement walls and sent seaweed and sand onto the floors.

In January, the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, which oversees the state’s beaches, agreed to give Dang a one-year permit to install 81 feet of riprap.

Dang still has a pending federal lawsuit against the city for the cost of damages to his home and lost rental income. His suit, which seeks at least $1.8 million, claims that the city discriminated against him based on his race. Dang immigrated from from Vietnam when he was 14.

The judge’s order that Rockaway Beach pay $213,000 doesn’t include what Dang has spent so far on his federal lawsuit.

-- Aimee Green

agreen@oregonian.com

o_aimee

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