The first court date in the legal battle over the city of St. George incorporation has been postponed one week—from Feb. 24 to March 2.
Nineteenth Judicial District Court Judge William Morvant pushed back the hearing not because it was scheduled for the day before Mardi Gras but because of a conflict.
The hearing will be the first of what will likely be many in a case that is expected to drag on for months, if not years. At issue is whether three of the four plaintiffs who sued St. George organizers Norman Browning and Chris Rials in the wake of last fall’s successful incorporation election have legal standing to sue.
Mayor Sharon Weston Broome, Metro Council member Lamont Cole, Baton Rouge resident M.E. Cormier and prospective St. George resident Lewis Unglesby are the plaintiffs in the suit, which challenges the organizers’ ability to deliver municipal services in the new city as promised.
St. George attorney Sheri Morris did not file an answer to that suit. Instead, she filed a procedural motion, arguing that Broome, Cole and Cormier are not legally entitled to sue—Broome because she is not the “governing authority” of Baton Rouge; Cole, because, though he is a member of the “governing authority” of Baton Rouge, he did not join the suit on behalf of the Metro Council but as an individual; and Cormier, because she would not be adversely affected by the incorporation as a resident of Baton Rouge.
Morris is not challenging Unglesby’s standing as a plaintiff, which raises the question: Why bother to challenge the standing of the other three?
For a couple of reasons, according to St. George spokesman Drew Murrell. First, if the court rules Broome, Cole and Cormier do not have standing to sue, it potentially kicks the issue to the Metro Council, as the governing authority of the parish, he says.
“The Metro Council would have to decide whether they’re going to be in this lawsuit or not,” he says. “They clearly had not indicated they were in it. They haven’t approved litigation. They have done nothing to indicate a willingness to be in it, so if three of these four are thrown out then they have to decide what they want to do”
Also, he says, the fewer plaintiffs challenging the incorporation, the better, adding, “In our minds, that would make it a lot easier to move forward.”
