More than 120 Pine View Estates residents were packed into a standing-room only meeting of their homeowners association on Thursday night.
So many of the residents turned out a second meeting was scheduled for later that night where attorney Tanya Smith described a federal lawsuit filed on Feb. 25 that named every homeowner in the subdivision as a defendant.
Smith said she represents the association not individual homeowners, but homeowners should contact the title company that insured their land if they’ve been served.
Process servers were working in the Pine Nut neighborhood because each defendant has to be served in person.
“The lawsuit is to establish who has rights to the land,” she said. “It’s not an eviction notice. No one will come to tell you to get off the land.”
Pine View Estates is located on 62 acres in the Pine Nut Mountains along Highway 395 south of Gardnerville.
The community was built on land held in trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs for Mark Kizer, who leased the land to PTP Inc.
The homeowners living in Pine View Estates are subleasees, Smith said.
Kizer is suing in federal court over the title to the land because he’s alleging the agreement he had with PTP is in violation of federal law.
Among the issues with the agreement are the length of the 99-year lease, which the lawsuit claims should be 50 years, and the conditions under which homeowners could purchase their property.
Smith told residents if they’d been served, they should contact the title company for their land. She said the original title company is Old Republic Title Insurance Co. and gave residents the company’s phone number.
“It is important you forward the lawsuit to your title insurance company,” she said. Otherwise residents might be in default. If they get their title company the lawsuit within 21 days of being served, then the company is going to be able to fight the action in federal court.
She said if residents want to forward the lawsuit to the company that insures the title on their house, they may just to be sure.
“Keep everything together in a file,” she said. “Sometimes these things take years, or the parties settle. The insurance company has a duty to defend you if there is a potential for coverage based on the way the lawsuit is written.”
She said anyone who doesn’t have title insurance on the land should hire an attorney.
