Free Article X Legal Advice - FROM WHO???!!!

I noted that Cape Vincent Councilman John Byrne was at a Lyme town board meeting promoting free legal advice to that town about how to handle Article X from “an attorney”.  So I wondered who that attorney would be?  Turns out it is none other than Gary Abraham, which makes me wonder why Byrne is promoting this guy.  This is real intriguing, if you know the history, which I will outline below.  So why is that important? Well it just so happens Mr. Abraham handled a previous law suit for WPEG and more specifically for Byrne and CV Councilman Schneider, then members of WPEG.  They and WPEG sued the former CV Planning Board over the acceptance of Acciona’s SEQR FEIS, and it wasn't free!!! Well if you are going to take free advice from a lawyer on a wind matter it might seem reasonable to see how that lawyer did on a law suit involving a local wind matter. 

The answer my friends is not well.  And forget the story about Voters For Wind gripping about the lawyer being anti wind...that's not the important story here!

I debated Byrne and Mr. Schneider about this suit. I even sent them a few things to consider when they asked on the JLL blog for any documents or other information the public might have that could help the case. My point was that they should forget the FEIS details like sound etc and attack directly on the conflicts, and they should use a different lawyer that was a litigator, not a SEQR attorney, or at least include the other lawyer…which they didn’t . The different lawyer I suggested was a litigator and had already done some good work for WPEG.  In fact was the lawyer on the only law suit WPEG won.   I also made the point that I thought the court would not get into a debate over the details of the sound issues, which it didn’t.  I also pointed out that if you are going to claim that the planning board didn’t take a “hard look”  at the FEIS SEQR study, then they had harmed their own case by bring in all these sound experts for the PB to consider.  Whether the PB took a hard look or not, it looked as if they did from all the information presented, and I though the court would defer to that PB decision in a home rule state. The court was not going to get into arguing those details so you might as well attack what made the FEIS process corrupted which was the conflicts of interest. Byrne and Schneider thought the SEQR sound case was a strong case.  Of course they were getting that from their “expert” who I was repeatedly told they were going to defer to. 

 But essentially that was all a moot point because the court never even got that far because Mr. Abraham only put WPEG on the court petition as the petitioner and no individual names like Byrne and Schneider.  The court determined it was a fatal flaw in the case, and WPEG had not proved it’s standing to sue. Kind of a critical little thing!!!  Which had been done in all the other WPEG law suits.  

Note above that the court considers the lack of names on the petition as the significant fatal flaw that killed the case.

Not below there are no names on the court petition other than WPEG

Note below another WPEG law suit petition using the lawyer I had recommended for the above suit.  He didn't make that simple mistake.  He actually put WPEG AND names on the petition and established standing to sue, and he also won, or at least settled the case for WPEG with good results.  This suit kept Rienbeck from passing his last minute developer friendly revenge wind law after he was defeated in the 2009 elections by Hirschey.  This suit WAS all about the conflict issue and done by a good attorney.  Imagine that!!!! Had he not won on this matter or got it settled Hirschey could have been stuck with a BS developer friendly wind law that would have been a disaster! 

Before you can start arguing the details of the case it's pretty simple legal stuff to understand that you have to establish standing or that you basically have justification to sue.  They lost the case on that point, yet they decided to appeal at one point, but that has been stopped.  I told them the appeal was pointless too. Once again, so much for the “experts”.  I had put money into other WPEG cases but I wasn’t going to put a dime in this one.  Thus one more frustration with WPEG and their experts.  And now we have a zoning attorney picked by basically WPEG people on the town board, and he says he can’t defend the view.  More stellar performance!

So I’m not sure we should be taking advice from Mr. Byrne about taking free legal advice from Mr. Abraham with his past performance.  I hope we aren’t using him for free Article X legal advice in CV!!!! God help us!!!!