More than 20 months after the city-parish filed suit challenging the incorporation of the proposed city of St. George, the case could finally be heading to trial in 19th Judicial District Court.
A pretrial conference is scheduled for July 28, at which time Judge William Morvant is expected to set a date, St. George spokesman Drew Murrell says.
First, however, the two sides in the case have to settle a dispute over who actually represents the people in the prospective city. A hearing on that issue is scheduled for July 26.
“We need to decide Monday who represents the people out there, if anyone,” says attorney Mary Olive Pierson, who represents the plaintiffs in the case, Mayor Sharon Weston Broome and Metro Council member Lamont Cole. “I don’t think people in St. George know they do not have a representative.”
In court documents filed earlier this year, Pierson argues that the named defendants in the case, St. George organizers Norman Browning and Chris Rials, claimed in depositions that they do not represent in the lawsuit the 14,585 people in the prospective city who voted to incorporate; rather, they represent only themselves as individuals.
Fueling Pierson’s claim is a letter from attorneys Christina Peck and Sheri Morris, who represent Browning and Rials, responding to a deposition request by saying, “there is no organization known as ‘the Petitioners to Incorporate the proposed City of St George’ to respond to the … deposition or to designate anyone to testify on its behalf. … The Petitions to Incorporate the Proposed City of St. George consist of 14,585 electors … these electors are not parties to these proceedings and we are not legal counsel to any of these electors except Norman Browning and Chris Rials.”
The issue is significant, Pierson argues, because if Peck and Morris represent Browning and Rials only as individuals, not as agents of the prospective city, then the people of St. George have no one fighting for their interests in the incorporation lawsuit.
St. George spokesperson Drew Murrell says the dispute is a nonissue, intended to distract from the more pressing matters of the case.
“When you don’t have any facts, you start looking for red herrings,” he says. “We are going to be successful and she knows it so she is reverting to Mary Olive Pierson tactics.”
Browning and Rials were chair and co-chair of the St. George incorporation petition effort, and were sued in that capacity, Murrell says. State law specifies that a legal challenge to a municipal incorporation must be served “on the chairperson of the incorporation petition.”
But that does not mean Browning and Rials represent the people of St. George who voted to incorporate, he says, nor do Peck and Morris.
Pierson says that is her point.
“If this is the way they handle their lawsuits, they don’t need to be in charge of this city,” she says.
