A private school is demanding about $17 million in damages from the village of Palmetto Bay, a current council member and a neighborhood group, saying village leaders have unlawfully stalled plans for an expansion of the school, costing the non-profit school millions in lost tuition and attorney’s fees.
Palmetto Bay already has lost two appeals in which judges have said village officials arbitrarily and unreasonably prevented the Palmer Trinity School from moving ahead with its plans.
Meanwhile, the school is seeking sanctions against Village Council member Joan Lindsay for allegedly destroying evidence relevant to the legal battle before she was on the council — while she was the head of the Concerned Citizens of Old Cutler advocacy group.
The demand for the money and the accusation against Lindsay are the latest developments in a series of court battles that date back more than three years.
“Simply put, enough is enough,” Sean Cleary, an attorney for the school, said in court papers.
At issue is a dispute pitting the village’s desire to please neighbors — who think the school will bring crowding, noise and traffic — against the private-property rights of Palmer-Trinity.
As a result, Palmer Trinity says it allegedly sustained significant losses, including about $2 million in legal fees, $14.4 million in tuition and $1.35 million in lost philanthropic donations.
“We have amended our complaints to assert further claims for damages in an effort to recover some of the money we have so regretfully had to spend defending our inalienable rights to use our property,” said Sean Murphy, Palmer Trinity’s head of school.
Then there’s the dispute with Lindsay.
In court papers, Palmer says it has been trying for months to get e-mails exchanged between Lindsay and village officials discussing the school expansion. Certain village zoning decisions are quasi-judicial, meaning that council members are supposed to make decisions based solely on evidence presented at a hearing rather than based on political concerns. But the school believes village officials were biased, and the e-mails could help prove it.
According to Palmer, Lindsay stated in depositions that she deleted all of her e-mails on a regular basis, except a few that she printed out. Palmer then asked for Lindsay’s hard drive so technicians could look at it, and she fought the request. When a judge finally ordered her to turn over the drive, her lawyer told the court that Lindsay’s computer had been “trashed,” and was not available for inspection.
Tucker Gibbs, Lindsay’s lawyer, said the computer was damaged and the hard drive was no longer functioning, which compelled his client to recycle it and purchase a new one. All e-mails significant to the case have been turned over, he said.
“The bottom line, my client did not destroy any evidence,” he said. “All evidence of any communication relating to the rezoning of the property has been turned over to the school. They have it.”
In the case of the Concerned Citizens of Old Cutler, last month court records show that the group’s current president, Betty Pegram continued to lobby the village regarding Palmer Trinity.
In one e-mail Pegram suggests that the organization’s members “e-mail the village council and village manager to request they hire a traffic engineer, a planner, and a sound engineer to produce the competent substantial evidence to limit Palmer Trinity’s expansion.”
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