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Neighborhood Environment & Traffic
Safety |
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To all: **
Updated: 7/20/2010 ** The following recaps what has been happening with our lawsuit filed against the City of Rockford, since the Rock Church meeting on May 8, 2008. TO GET THE LATEST NEWS, SCROLL DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE. On May 12, 2008, the City’s Response to our Complaint was filed by Angela Hammer, Assistant City Attorney and appeared pretty boiler plate. ( please refer to the copy of the Original Complaint, if you do not have a copy, you can download or print a copy of the entire Complaint on our Website, StopAsphalt.org ) As expected, the City denies all of our points of contention; Count I, (para. 7 & 10), Count II ( para. 10 - 15) and Count III ( para 17 ) and neither admit or deny Count I ( para. 1,3,4 ) but want "strict proof" for those basic informational items; i.e. are we really owners of property located in or near the City of Rockford . Everything else, ( Count I, para. 5,6,8,9 ), which are just statements of fact, they agree to. On Thursday, June 5, 2008, as we all expected and as our Attorney, Jim Hess had told us, Rockford Blacktop (RBT) petitioned the court to be included as an additional defendant in our complaint. An attorney named Donald Q. Manning, representing RBT filed the necessary documents. Mr. Manning is a partner with McGreevy Williams, a Rockford law firm with offices out by the Aldeen Golf Course. Per the documents filed by Attorney Manning for RBT, in addition to their Petition to Intervene and their Answers to our Complaint, RBT as an Intervenor also made a Motion to Toll Limitations. This Motion to Toll Limitations, Attorney Hess explained to me is simply a request to "Stop the Clock" from running on those items within the Special Use Permit ( SUP ) that place a time restriction on RBT to make certain improvements at the site along with setting a five-year expiration term on the SUP. They are asking for these times to be stopped as of the date of our filing, April 9, 2008 and not start up again until the completion of all proceedings in trial court and the disposition of all appeals, if any. Attorney Hess filed with the Court our Response, which, in summary, asks for the Court to deny the Intervenor's Motion to Toll Limitations, because we feel the Intervenor did not cite any authority for an extension of the five year term of the SUP and that the Motion is premature and that they did not show any reason that they need the relief requested now, On June 11, 2008, a preliminary hearing was held with Judge Ronald Pirrello,
who issued an order that: On July 19, 2008, Attorney Hess filed a "Request for Production of Documents" to both the City and RBT. His request asked for a copy of the complete transcript of the ZBA meeting along with the City's files on the application and supporting documents submitted by RBT for the special use permit ( SUP ) along with the City's file supporting the recommendation. RBT and the City have 28 days to respond. At the August 7, 2008 hearing, RBT presented their request to us for the "Production of Documents" which Attorney Hess will be preparing an answer to over the next 4 weeks. At the August 7, 2008 hearing, RBT's attorney also requested the Judge to allow them to add some additional potential defenses that they left out of their original response. This was postponed until September 3, 2008, when the Judge will hear arguments on whether to allow the defenses to be added, at which time Attorney Hess will present our objections to the inclusion of these additional potential defenses. At the Status Hearing on September 3, 2008, because no discovery has taken place and no other legal activity has begun, the Judge allowed RBT to amend their original Response The next scheduled court status hearing was set for 90 days, i.e. early December, but Attorney Hess thought we would be back in court sooner to discuss open requests for the Production of Documents. A
status hearing was held on December 11, 2008, which again was about Production
of Documents. Attorney Hess did
provide RBT with some of the information they requested but refused to give them
other information on the grounds that it was
" not relevant and unnecessarily burdensome".
The City and RBT did not provide us with any of the information we
requested. Another hearing was set for February 11, 2009. At
the February 11, 2009 hearing no further information was exchanged and another
hearing was set for March 11, 2009. On
March 11, 2009, the City did provided us with a Disk containing some of the
information we had requested but they still did not provide a written copy of
the complete transcript of the ZBA meeting.
RBT presented a Motion to the Judge for us to present further information
because they were not satisfied with Attorney Hess’s Argument of Refusal
presented on December 11, 2008. The
Judge agreed to hear further arguments at a special hearing on April 23, 2009. On
April 23, 2009, Attorney Hess again argued that the City must provide us a copy
of the ZBA written transcript. The
Judge agreed but stated that since the City had to pay to have the transcript
prepared that we would have to pay a reasonable amount to obtain it.
The City tentatively agreed to this.
The Judge also agreed that RBT was entitled to additional information but
put tighter time restrictions on their requests.
Attorney Hess agreed to these and drafted an order that summarized the
above decisions. On
June 16, 2009 we were back in Court again because the City had backed out of the
agreed upon procedures on producing a copy of the written transcript to us.
The Judge again reiterated what he had said and Attorney Hess completed
drafting the Order for all parties and the Judge to sign.
The order was signed in late June, 2009 and we produced the additional
discovery documents for RBT during the last week in July and delivered the
documents to them. The City finally
produced a copy of the complete written transcript to Attorney Hess on Monday,
August 17, 2009, more than a year after we first asked for it on July 19, 2008.
At the November 18,2009 status hearing, Attorney Hess informed the Judge
and the defendant's ( RBT and the City ) that he is going to be
preparing a Motion for Summary Judgement to be presented to the Court hopefully
within the next thirty days. This Motion for Summary Judgement will pertain to
Count One of our Complaint and will ask the Court to find in our favor based
on our review of the Transcript.
This Motion was presented to the Court on Wednesday, January 13, 2010. At that time another status hearing was set for January 27, 2010. At the January 27, 2010 status hearing, Attorney Hess informed the Court and opposing counsel that , in defense of the Motion for Summary Judgement, he would be preparing a Memorandum of Law with supporting affidavits from several of us that made presentations at the ZBA meeting, and that he would provide these to opposing counsel and the Court by February 24, 2010. This Memorandum of Law and the supporting documents is, in effect, supporting our claim that we were denied our procedural due process rights in not being able to properly cross examine witnesses at the ZBA meeting.. This document was prepared and sent to the Court and opposing counsel. ** The following was added 7/20/2010: ** On April 21, 2010, RBT and the City filed their Response In Opposition (RIO) to our Motion for Summary Judgement. This was a 23 page document which also had a whole stack of exhibits attached to it. Our Attorney Jim Hess prepared our Reply to the above mentioned RIO and presented it on May 5, 2010, to the Court, RBT and the City. On May 17th, RBT's attorney filed with the Court another Motion, which contained, amongst other things, a request to seek depositions from those of us that had supplied affidavits. These depositions were needed, they said, to further clarify the affidavits that we submitted. A deposition is a fact gathering session under oath, done outside of the courtroom. The judge is not present. Attorney Hess again presented our opposition to this Motion and presented it to the Court. On June 9, after hearing both sides concerning RBT's request to take depositions and our objections, Judge Pirrello only granted RBT the right to take the deposition of Alec Kaplanes but he denied taking depositions from the others. This deposition was taken on July 6, 2010. Sometime in mid-June, it became known, through newspaper articles and TV reports, that Judge Pirrello, the judge on our case, had submitted his resignation from the bench, for retirement reasons, and a new Judge was being appointed to the 17 th Circuit , effective July 1, 2010. This new Judge would be sent to Boone County and the Judge from Boone County, Judge Doherty, was being sent to Winnebago County. At the last status meeting held on July 8,2010, which was presided over by Judge Doherty, nothing at all happened because the docket of cases was quite long and the case load needed further sorting out. Another status hearing was scheduled for August 12, 2010, so we will find out more then. I am trying to keep these summarizations in terms that we all can understand since all of the documents are in "Legaleze" terms. Thanks for your support. Alec Kaplanes NETS
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 Send Donations to: NETS How the City Council Voted: In our favor: NETS thanks.... NOT in our favor: (Linda McNeeley - D-13 was absent)
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