Then: Brothers Charles T. King III and Michael D. King filed a lawsuit against the town of New Hope in Marion County over property on which New Hope has a fire hall, parking lot and fuel tanks.
Filed in April 2023, the lawsuit sought an accounting of the possible underground fuel tank, the removal of part of the parking lot and fire hall building, restoration of the property to its original condition, granting a judgment for the fair rental value of the town’s use of the Kings’ property and awarding unspecified damages.
The property in question, an odd-shaped parcel of less than a half-acre on State Route 156, housed the town’s old city hall and fire hall with a parking lot and a fuel tank for equipment, according to court documents. The structures were built in the 1970s. In 2009, the town constructed a new building for the fire department across the road from the old one.
According to a deed record included in the complaint, the King brothers’ father, Charles T. King Jr., conveyed the 0.47 acres on June 1, 1974, to himself, J.L. Kennemore and Guy Allen Frame, trustees of the New Hope Volunteer Fire Department. The deed, drafted around the time the buildings were constructed, states that if the property ever ceases to be used for the town’s fire department, it automatically reverts to King and his heirs. When the father died, his property fell to his two sons and daughter, according to court records. His daughter conveyed her interest to her brothers.