Severin Carrell reported yesterday in the Guardian that the Trump Organization is refusing to accept a legal bill of tens of thousands of pounds for the Scottish government’s court costs when it defended against Trump’s lawsuit over the European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre, an eleven-turbine windfarm in Aberdeen Bay, Scotland. Trump had called the windfarm ‘’monstrous’’, claiming that it would ruin the view from his golf resort at Menie; the wind farm is about three miles away from the clubhouse and 2.4 miles from the course’s southern boundary.
Trump took his case to the courts and eventually lost in the UK supreme court in 2015, which awarded court costs to the Scottish government. Trump’s firm has refused to accept the bill for the costs, so the dispute over the legal bills is now before a court-appointed adjudicator.
Last month the Trump organization admitted that Trump’s golf resort was never developed according to plans not because of the windfarm, but because of the 2008 recession and 2014 drop in oil prices. The golf club has lost money seven years in a row, and last week posted an annual loss of a million pounds.
Meanwhile, despite Trump’s assertion that the windfarm would never be built, all of the planned wind turbines were installed — including two 8.8 MW Vestas V164 models that are the most powerful wind turbines deployed anywhere in the world — and the windfarm was officially inaugurated in September 2018.