A legal fight is slowing City Hall’s efforts to remove the last remaining statue of a slavery- defending Confederate military leader.

The statue is of Gen.A.P. Hill, which now stands in the middle of the intersection of West Laburnum Avenue and Hermitage Road in North Side.

The fight in Richmond Circuit Court is over who will get the statue, which has stood at the site since 1891 and marks the grave of the general, who was killed as Union troops finally captured Petersburg on April 2, 1865.

Mayor Levar M. Stoney and City Council want the statue to go to the Richmond-based Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, which already has received title to the city’s other removed Confederate statues.

Relatives of Gen. Hill object, and instead want the city to pay to relocate the “grave marker ... with discretion and dignity as a cenotaph (war memorial) in a place and in a manner” they would determine, according to a court filing.

No date has been scheduled for a hearing before Judge David E. Cheek Sr., who has been assigned the case.

Attorneys for the city and the family members are seeing eye to eye on several major elements of the case.

Both sides have agreed that the general’s casket and remains can be removed for reinterment at city expense at Fairview Cemetery in Culpeper.

The contest over the statue is whether it is a war memorial like the other statues that were removed from Monument Avenue, Monroe Park and Church Hill, or whether Gen. Hill’s statue is a grave marker.

The legal contest began when interim City Attorney Haskell C. Brown III, who has just secured council support to fill the job on a permanent basis, hired one of the city’s largest law firms, Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP, to handle the matter.

In a May 24 petition to the court, a three-member team led by Robert M. Rolfe, asked for an order allowing removal of the remains and the statue. The petition cited previously approved ordinances calling for the Hill monument to be treated like the other statues.

On June 30, Madison County-based attorney S. Braxton Puryear filed a response and counterclaim on behalf of four collateral relatives of the general, who has no direct descendants.

That filing urged Judge Cheek to find that the burial site of the general “is a cemetery and not subject to the city’s custody or control” and to award the remains and the statue to the relatives, listed as Leonard M. Cowherd, John Michael Hill, Catheryn Hill Ketterman and Lawrence Douglas Mason.

Mr. Puryear said Monday that his clients have not made a final decision on where they want the statue to be installed but would likely do so if the judge dismisses the city’s petition and finds for them.

Mr. Rolfe and his team have yet to file a response to the counterclaim, which is due to the court around July 22.

Under court rules, Mr. Puryear will have an opportunity to respond, and then it may take several months for a hearing to be scheduled.

Until the court renders a decision, the statue will remain place.