CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Charlottesville City Council approved a settlement of the zoning ordinance lawsuit during Monday night’s meeting.

City Attorney John Maddux said he was initially skeptical of the deal, noting the city had offered the White vs. City of Charlottesville plaintiffs similar terms in July, but he endorsed the settlement. Councilors passed it unanimously.

The settlement Council approved requires the city to submit information to VDOT for a traffic study of the new development plan Council passed in December 2023. In return, the plaintiffs will drop their lawsuit.

“Now, litigation posture was a little bit different then, I don’t fault them for rejecting the claim at that time,” Maddux said. “Now, I’m happy to say that they’ve now come back to the table with that same offer, and after some back-and-forth between plaintiffs’ counsel and myself, we’re able to reach a settlement with which I think the city can fully comply with its obligations.”

Maddux said strongly believed the city would have won the case if it had gone to court as scheduled, in September 2026.

“In between there, we would have to conduct significant discovery, depositions, get our experts up to speed on the case, we would have to depose the plaintiffs’ experts, there’s a lot of litigation that would happen between now and September,” Maddux said. “And that assumes there would not be any appeals after that case, and while I feel strongly we have a very good argument that we complied with all the procedural and legal requirements and would be costly to get there.”

He told Council that the plaintiffs came to City Manager Sam Sanders about a month ago with this offer.

City Councilor Lloyd Snook told WINA Morning News last summer, when the litigation began, that he did not believe the city had to submit for a traffic study, and that VDOT, informed the city it wasn’t sure what the procedure to do would be.

Snook told Morning News on Tuesday, “The only requirement from the city’s perspective is we have to send off to VDOT, to engage with VDOT, to do a transportation study which we never thought was necessary and still frankly don’t think it’s necessary.”

“There’s no harm in doing it, except it’s going to cost us some money,” Snook said. “We also approved up to $650,000 not only for a transportation study, but for a study of other aspects of our infrastructure as well… sewer capacity, water capacity, that sort of thing.”

Maddux told Council the study project will likely not cost as much as $650,000, but the litigation would most assuredly cost more than that.