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After a nearly three-year legal battle, a judge has thrown out a lawsuit in Clackamas County Circuit Court that accused Jusuf Nurkić of dumping trash on his neighbor’s property.
Senior Judge Marilyn Litzenberger ruled in the former Portland Trail Blazer center’s favor last week. (Nurkić was traded to the Phoenix Suns last year.)
Neighbor Kent Seida has agreed not to appeal the ruling and says he will donate $500 to Nurkić's charity. “I regret blaming you for trespassing and dumping fallen tree limbs on my cattle farm,” he wrote in a letter addressed to Nurkić.
When reached by phone, Seida characterized the outcome as a win-win. He says the landscaping company hired by Nurkić had paid to repair his damaged fence. “I got my damages, he got a face-saving letter,” Seida says.
The woman who picked up the phone at Big Sky Landscaping, however, didn’t seem happy. “I wish I could say certain things, but I’d better not,” she said, and declined to comment further.
Jeff Edelson, Nurkic’s attorney, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Seida, 84, filed the lawsuit in 2021, accusing Nurkic of throwing “debris, including trash, tree limbs, concrete, and rocks,” into his West Linn property and damaging his fence. He demanded over $8,000 in damages.
In the years since, he added additional demands, including that Nurkić and his employees cease “pointing laser beams at Seida’s cattle and family members.”
In response, Edelson demanded the lawsuit be thrown out, pointing out that Seida was a “serial and vexatious litigant” who’d filed more than 50 lawsuits around the state. Seida’s 37-acre ranch in question was barely used and “choked with weeds, garbage, and abandoned appliances,” Edelson wrote.
“[Seida’s] ‘facts’ and ‘evidence’ exist only in his imagination,” Edelson concluded in a Oct. 26, 2022, motion for summary judgement.
Judge Litzenberger was sympathetic, ruling last summer that Seida must reimburse Big Sky’s legal fees—and, on Feb. 12, ruled in favor of Edelson’s motion.