Oprah Winfrey Sued Over Planned Mega-Mansion

Oprah just can't find a happy home.

Weeks after the media mogul's stepmother publicly accused her of callously stripping her of her home, a lawsuit has emerged accusing her of usurping land in a Colorado ski town.

The lawsuit filed by retired physicist Charles D. Goodman accuses Oprah Winfrey's planned Telluride mega-mansion of blocking access to hiking trails enjoyed by neighbors for decades, the Denver Post reported.

The angry neighbor's suit attacks Winfrey's company, Yellow Brick Road, as well as the town of Mountain Village and the two prior property owners who reportedly were paid $10.85 million for the land's sale.

"I don't care if Oprah is a neighbor, but if she is going to cut off access to trails, I don't find that acceptable," Goodman, 86, vented to the Denver Post.

A spokeswoman for Winfrey's company, reacting to the suit, issued a statement vowing to work with the affected homeowners to ensure "reasonable access" to portions of the land.

That assurance appeared to offer little comfort to Goodman.

"One month before Oprah closed on the property, the rights of way disappeared entirely," his attorney, Rober Korn, told the paper about the access to trails.

Goodman vented that the trails' access are the result of negotiations in 1989 between him and the U.S. Forest Service, which was his then-next door neighbor.

When the U.S. Forest Service traded the land to the Telluride Ski Co. later on, it was under the promise that access to the trails would continue, even after they sold off the land for Mountain Village home sites, according to Goodman.

That allegedly all changed with the land's sale to Winfrey, however.

Shortly before the land was sold, Goodman's suit claims its former owners, Hoyt and Carol Barnett, amended the plat without notifying Goodman or any of the other neighbors of the changes to the trails' access.

That charge has been argued by the director of community development for Mountain Village, who denied the trails' closure to the Post.

Winfrey plans to build a mansion and guest home on the property beginning this summer, one that's reportedly still under an architect's design.

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