Following years of delays preventing an expansion onto its own privately owned land, the Palmer Trinity School has filed a lawsuit against the village of Palmetto Bay, a current council member, and a neighborhood advocacy group. Palmer Trinity is a private non-profit school, which has sought to expand onto a 33-acre piece of land adjacent to the existing campus. The additional land was purchased by the school in 2003.
The lawsuit is seeking approximately $17 million in damages that have stemmed from lost tuition, lost donations and legal fees generated while defending its right to use its own property.
“Simply put, enough is enough,” said attorney Sean Cleary in court papers. Sean Cleary, of the Law Offices of Sean M. Cleary, is representing Palmer Trinity in its bid to be compensated for the infringement of its property rights.
The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal battles which pit the private property rights of the school against local politicians who are lobbied by neighbors and advocacy groups. In 2008 the Village Council unanimously rejected an application by the school to rezone the land in question. Palmer Trinity appealed the decision to Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal, which sided with the school, calling the rejection of the application “arbitrary” and “unreasonable.”
The schools subsequent application to use the newly rezoned land was approved by the council, but there were included limitations on student populations, and a 30-year moratorium on any further expansion. Palmer Trinity has already won an appeal which struck down the enrollment cap, while a lawsuit on the expansion moratorium is still pending.
The advocacy group Concerned Citizens of Old Cutler, and current council member Joan Lindsay, are named in the suit because of their roles in the delay of the expansion. Certain village zoning decisions are supposed to be based on evidence presented at hearings rather than political concerns, but the school believes that village officials were biased.
The school is also seeking sanctions against Lindsay for allegedly destroying evidence in the form of emails and a computer hard drive, which may have shown intense lobbying against the expansion while she was the head of the advocacy group.
If your property rights are being infringed upon by zoning restrictions or some other governmental entity, contact the Law Offices of Sean M. Cleary. In addition to being one of Florida’s most respected personal injury attorneys, he also represents clients in a variety of business matters requiring litigation and negotiations.