Image of Park City Mountain Resort From Wikimedia Commons.

Just when you thought the lawsuit between Park City and Vail could not get any more dramatic PCMR states that if they lose the lawsuit they will dismantle and remove chairlifts.

Jenni Smith, the president and general manager of PCMR, indicated in court last week that the resort intends to dismantle and remove most of the ski lifts if it is forced off the land by, Talisker Land Holdings, LLC.

“The eviction notice served to PCMR maintains that structures and improvements “that are affixed” to the property, will belong to Talisker Land Holdings, LLC if it is successful in the case. However, PCMR is of the believe that the chairlifts, though bolted to concrete footings, are not “affixed” to the land.

The removal of the chairlifts would include the towers, chairs, cables, the grips attached to the chairs, the bullwheels that move the cables and counterweights. “If we are forced to vacate the property, we will take our property with us,” Alan Sullivan, PCMR’s lead attorney, said in an interview.

The resort’s memorandum points to past cases outside of Utah addressing airplane hangars and silos as precedents in defining what is affixed to a property. Hangars and silos were not found to be fixtures in those cases, the PCMR side says. It says previous cases, also outside of Utah, are “split on whether ski lifts are fixtures” and the outcomes depended on the details of those cases.

“PCMR does not have the legal right to remove all the chairlifts from the mountain, but their threats are disturbing and not constructive and designed only to further delay a realistic resolution of this matter,” said John Lund, the lead attorney for Talisker Land Holdings, LLC.

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