An insurance company has filed a lawsuit against two construction businesses for allegedly causing a landslide that affected a property owned and operated by Marriott Vacations Worldwide near Park City Mountain in 2023.
Zurich American Insurance Company filed the complaint last month. The lawsuit claimed Big-D Signature LLC and CRH Partners LLC were responsible for building a residential development, dubbed The King’s Crown, on the slope above Marriott’s MountainSide, which Zurich insured.
The complaint said Marriott’s MountainSide was built in 1998 and that the slope above it was “steepened” during its construction. However, the slope “remained stable and undisturbed for over 20 (years) after the construction of the resort,” according to court documents.
CRH Partners started building the residential development in 2018, which included installing a 16-inch waterline and storm drainpipe near the top of the slope, exposing the bedrock.
“During the winter of 2022-23, Park City experienced very heavy snowfall and CRH plowed snow that fell on King’s Crown during this winter into enormous piles at the top of the slope,” the complaint said. “The resort’s management company warned CRH against piling the snow at the top of the slope because of concerns over seepage and weakening the slope’s stability.”
The lawsuit claimed CRH Partners and Big-D Signature failed to use “reasonable care and caution” by “carelessly and negligently” installing the waterline, “which allowed or caused runoff, snowmelt and water to migrate into the slope layers.” The migration of the water allegedly “created the unreasonable risk of the landslide” and its resulting damage.
It additionally said the two companies failed to implement mitigation measures, allowed an “excessive amount of snowmelt” to run down the slope and “carelessly and negligently failed to contain water, snowmelt and rainfall on the King’s Crown property.”
The complaint concluded by requesting a trial to determine compensatory damages, but it did not detail how much those damages may be or how much Zurich paid to Marriott Vacations Worldwide as part of its insurance payout.
Neither CRH Partners nor Big-D Signature have responded to the lawsuit in court as of Tuesday morning.
The landslide occurred on April 29, 2023, uprooting at least one tree and reaching a small section of the Marriott’s MountainSide’s exterior.
Nobody was injured, and Park City Mountain at the time said the slide did not cause any damage at the resort.
Aerial photos of the slide showed it broke free close to the King’s Crown’s construction zone. A member of the King’s Crown ownership, Rory Murphy, previously told The Park Record that the slide measured approximately 100 feet in length and approximately 70 feet in width. It was estimated to be up to 15 feet deep at its deepest point.
Murphy also said it broke at least one window at Marriott’s MountainSide.
He said a preliminary investigation indicated the ground became oversaturated during the heavy snow in the winter and spring, leading to the instability that caused the slide.
Murphy, a veteran Park City developer, said there hadn’t been issues with the ground during construction until the slide. There were no warning sides of a threat, he said.
A Marriott Vacations Worldwide spokesperson issued a prepared statement after the landslide, saying it “caused some damage at Marriott’s MountainSide in Park City. No associates or guests were injured when an exterior wall of the building was pushed into an unoccupied villa during the landslide. The safety and wellbeing of our owners, guests and associates remains a priority as we continue to assess the damage.”