Franklin F. Snyder
Q ..
I imagine it's pretty expensive, too.
.
A.
Yes, I imagine so. We looked at several, 200-300 acre pieces that the water
l
company had bought. It was easier for them, I guess, to buy the whole property
than it was to buy a piece of it.
Another cast was Four-Mile Run, which starts in east Falls Church. Its drainage is
from Arlington and Fairfax Counties and Alexandria. It runs down along the edge
of Alexandria. It's almost all Hispanic now I think. It's as you go into Alexandria
from Arlington and that area got flooded badly a number of times. The Corps
finally did a big project on it.
But there part of the problem, too, was that it goes underneath all of the railroad
tracks there into the Potomac right adjacent to the airport. The water would back
up from those openings underneath the railroad tracks and it would flood that section
of Alexandria. So a number of the citizens, the property owners there, hired Boothe
to sue the city because of, I guess primarily of negligence. The case was heard in
court and we won the jury decision. The dam judge reversed it.
Armistead still had a little money left over so he appealed it to the Supreme Court.
But they backed up the judge. I saw that Supreme Court ruling, and I never saw
anything so stupid as the justification they used for supporting the judge overriding
the jury. From. then on, I've always wondered about the Virginia Supreme Court,
just what they were, and what good they were.
Q ..
All political appointees, right? What was your most challenging consulting job?
I think the most, maybe I could think of others as challenging, but the most
A
interesting was Lake Barcroft. Finally the dam abutment washed out. There were
a lot of lawsuits about that. I had, a friend that was a state senator and had been the
majority leader. He is still living, but retired. He's a lawyer, and has a law firm.
On that dam washout problem, Armistead Booth was not involved. This other law
firm was part of the defense. So this acquaintance of mine, who was a partner in
the law firm retained me as a consultant on that dam failure. It was, I don't
remember the year, but it was that storm where they had 15-16 inches of rain out
around in that area there. Whether it was ` 71.
Previous Page
