San Diego Developer Wins $94.5 Million Jury Verdict Over City's Broken Promises at Otay Mesa

In 1986, developer Roque de la Fuente II entered a formal agreement with the City of San Diego to develop the Border Business Park, a 312-acre commercial parcel in Otay Mesa near the U.S.-Mexico border. The deal set out specific terms about infrastructure, traffic flow, and the city's obligations to the surrounding area. What followed was nearly a decade and a half of disputes that eventually produced one of the largest jury verdicts in San Diego County history.

De la Fuente claimed the city damaged his project in two ways. First, city officials and airport planners publicized proposals to site a new international airport in Otay Mesa. Those announcements, he argued, chilled potential tenants and buyers, effectively freezing commercial interest in the business park without the city ever formally acquiring the land. Second, the city rerouted commercial truck traffic from a nearby border crossing, sending heavy vehicles queuing along the perimeter of his property. The congestion made the site difficult to access and, in the developer's account, made the park commercially unviable during years that should have been peak development.

Vincent Bartolotta of Thorsnes, Bartolotta and McGuire represented de la Fuente at trial. The plaintiff team pressed both an inverse condemnation theory, arguing the city's actions amounted to a taking of private property, and a breach-of-contract claim tied to the 1986 development agreement. In 2001, a San Diego Superior Court jury sided with de la Fuente and returned a verdict of $94.5 million. With accruing prejudgment interest during the years the case wound through the courts, potential exposure for the city climbed toward $120 million and eventually above $150 million.

The verdict did not survive intact on appeal. The California Court of Appeal, Fourth District, reversed the inverse condemnation portion of the award in 2006, holding that de la Fuente had not shown the kind of direct and special injury required to distinguish his loss from that of other property owners in the area generally affected by the airport proposal and the truck routing. The appellate court upheld the lower court's order for a new trial on the breach-of-contract claim, finding that some of the contract damages were time-barred.

Litigation between de la Fuente and the city continued for years afterward. In 2015, San Diego settled the remaining disputes for $25 million, with the developer agreeing to bring the business park into compliance with street, water, and electrical infrastructure requirements within five years. Bartolotta represented de la Fuente through the settlement negotiations as well. The 312-acre parcel, whose legal status had been clouded since the early 1990s, was finally cleared for development under the settlement's terms.