This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Family members of a mother and two children who were killed in a mudslide that crushed the Logan house they were renting have settled a lawsuit with the home's owner.
The settlement concludes the litigation that resulted after the hillside supporting the Logan Northern Canal slid on July 11, 2009, killing Jacqueline Leavey and her two children, 12-year-old Abbey Alanis and 13-year-old Victor Alanis Jr., under a wall of mud and debris. The settlement was noted Wednesday on the case docket in 1st District Court in Logan.
Eric Ashcroft, who owned the home on Canyon Road that Leavey was renting , was the final defendant in the civil lawsuit filed by Leavey's family. Ashcroft's attorneys were unavailable for comment Thursday.
Terms of the settlement were not made public. The case was scheduled to go to trial on Tuesday in Logan.
Joshua Lee, an attorney representing Leavey's mother and sister, Reina and Rosa Rivera, respectively, said his clients suffered a great loss as a result of the deaths and are glad the case is finished.
Lee said he was prepared to argue to a jury that Ashcroft had a duty to warn his tenants about the danger posed by the hillside.
"He knew this hillside had dangerous characteristics based on previous slides," Lee said.
On the morning the hill slid and the Logan Northern Canal collapsed, Ashcroft made a 911 call from the home reporting the hill was sloughing. Then, Lee said, Ashcroft drove home to get the phone number for the water master and did not warn Leavey or the children.
Minutes later, the hill and canal collapsed.
The hill and canal sat beneath Utah State University and property owned by the Utah Department of Transportation. Both they and the city of Logan had been repeatedly warned that runoff and seepage from the canal was contributing to landslides on the hill.
In 2011, all the other defendants in the lawsuit agreed to settle with the family. The Logan Northern Canal Co. agreed to pay $950,000; Logan paid $175,000; UDOT paid $75,000; and USU paid $50,000.
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