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Saturday, April 11, 2009
Ind. Courts - More on: "Judge pledges quick decision in Liberty Township hospital case"
Updating this ILB entry from March 7th, Vivki Urbanik of the Chesterton Tribune reported April 9th:
A Porter County judge pro tem has dismissed the lawsuit brought by the Liberty Landowners Association against the rezoning for the new Porter hospital in Liberty Township, saying that the citizens group lacks standing to sue because it doesn’t own property adjacent to the hospital site.Judge Pro Tem James Sarkisian, sitting in for Porter Circuit Court Judge Mary Harper, issued his ruling Wednesday that because the Liberty Landowners Association owns no property in the area of the proposed hospital at Ind. 49 and U.S. 6, it would suffer no loss if the hospital is built there and therefore lacks standing. * * *
Liberty Landowners Association President Alan Hewitt said the citizens group will meet next week to discuss its options, and that he suspects the membership will vote to appeal.
Hewitt said he’s disappointed by the ruling, mainly because the court dispute so far has focused only on whether the Liberty Landowners Association has standing to bring a suit. He said the overriding reason for the lawsuit -- whether “the commissioners have to follow their own rules” -- wasn’t even addressed.
Porter County officials sold the formerly county-owned Porter hospital to Community Health Systems, with the condition that a new, modern hospital is built with at least 225 private rooms. The hospital identified the site at U.S. 6 and Ind. 49 as its ideal location for the new hospital.
After the county commissioners voted 2-1 to rezone the property from residential to Institutional, the Liberty Landowners filed suit, contending that the rezoning violated a compatible use provision in the county’s Unified Development Ordinance.
County Attorney Gwenn Rinkenberger and the hospital argued that the landowners’ suit should be dismissed because the group lacks standing.
Sarkisian agreed. He cited a 2000 ruling by the Indiana Supreme Court in a zoning case brought by George Bagnall against the town of Beverly Shores as finding that in order to have standing to challenge a board of zoning appeals decision, a person must be aggrieved and that to be aggrieved, the person or party must “show some special injury other than that sustained by the community as a whole.”
Sarkisian cited two other court rulings that also tied property ownership to the question of standing. In one of those cases, the court found that a neighborhood association as a group did not have standing, but that individual landowners who were co-petitioners with the association did because they owned property adjoining or surrounding the site in question.
Sarkisian said there is no dispute that the Liberty Landowners own no real estate and that there is no evidence presented to show that the group would suffer a pecuniary loss by the hospital’s construction.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 11, 2009 10:04 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts