West Windsor’s Township lawyer Michael W. Herbert hopes recent decisions by a Superior Court Judge and the Supreme Court will put an end to litigation that the township has defended for over 20 years.
Rajeshwar and Roopa Yadav have named the township as defendant in eight separate court cases since 1983. Four state and four federal courts have ruled in favor of WW in the zoning dispute over the couple’s property on North Post Road.
The Yadavs applied for a subdivision in 1981 to build seven single family homes on their four-acre lot. West Windsor’s zoning restricts them from doing so on this piece of property.
According to Herbert, The couple was granted a conditional subdivision at that time. Rather than building, the Yadavs sued the township, claiming their conditions were illegal.
When a New Jersey judge ruled that the conditions were lawful, Yadav filed federal cases claiming the township discriminated against him. He claimed the township did not grant subdivisions to Asians, particularly of Indian descent, Herbert said.
Those cases were ruled in the Township’s favor. By that time, the three-year limit on the conditional subdivision had passed, and Herbert says the Yadavs at this time filed another lawsuit claiming that the time limit on the subdivision was illegal.
The court again ruled in favor of the township, and by this time the township had passed an ordinance raising the minimum property for a single family home to be built on from two-thirds of an acre to one acre. It has since been raised to one and two thirds acres.
Herbert said the Yadavs have since stopped using lawyers and Rajeshwar has argued subsequent cases without representation.
Judge Linda R. Feinberg ruled in that the couple must pay the township’s legal fees of $7,”500. Herbert expects an appeal.
