October 20, 2003

(Updated) Multnomah County Appeals Decision In Court Battle Over PUD Ballot Language

Note: This post has been updated. Any and all updates appear at the end of the original post.

As expected, the County has indeed appealed the decision, and according to Assistant County Attorney John Thomas a motion to stay the judge's order has also been filed with the Ninth Circuit.

According to Dan Meek, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs in the case, the County must "continue to comply with the U.S. District Court order until and unless the Ninth Circuit says otherwise." However, as noted elsewhere, neither the ads nor the website notice ordered by the judge have yet to appear.

October 20, 2003

Update

A bit of extra data, for those interested in how this plays out in sequence. According to Linda Williams, the other attorney involved on the side of the plaintiffs, the attorney for "intervenor" Mara Woloshin (that attorney being from Stoel Rives LLP, the law firm whose lawyers pad out the list of contributors to the fake "citizens" group opposing formation of the PUD), initially asked Judge Haggerty to stay the order when it was issued last Friday -- that is, if I'm understanding the timing correctly, I believe the first motion to stay occurred Friday and not today; I will correct this here if I'm mistaken on this point.

Haggerty denied this motion, and so today the County filed their appeal and their motion to stay with the Ninth Circuit. "Until and unless the higher court stays the injunction," says Williams, "it remains in effect." I'll leave it to our readers from the legal profession to make the knowledgable call here, but I presume this means that as it stands today, the County is in violation of Haggerty's order by neither taking out newspaper ads nor posting information on the Web.

October 20, 2003

Update

Okay, here's how the played out (for real this time, having had it spelled out for me in a little more detail). Mara Woloshin (whose attorney is from the law firm whose members pad out the list of contributors to the fake "citizens" group opposing the PUD) today asked Judge Haggerty to stay his order of last Friday. According to Linda Williams (one of the other attorneys, along with the aforementioend Dan Meek, involved on the side of the plaintiffs in the case), Haggerty "immediately declined."

At that point, Woloshin (in legal parlance termed an "intervenor" -- the other intervenor in the case being the State of Oregon) filed an appeal. More or less concurrently, the County -- the actual defendant in the case -- also filed an appeal and asked for an emergency stay of Haggerty's order.

"Until and unless the higher court stays the injunction," said Williams, "it remains in effect." I'll leave it to our readers from the legal profession to make the knowledgable call here, but I presume this means that as it stands today, the County is in violation of Haggerty's order by neither taking out newspaper ads nor posting information on the Web.

Posted at 06:12 PM | PermalinkComments (3) | TrackBacks (3)
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Comments (3)

  1. The One True b!X on 20 Oct 2003

    Meanwhile, you'll notice a fairly blatant example of my editorial policy in this item. For the sake of transparency, I don't delete what's already been posted. In this case, that meant striking out the not-quite-correct description of the sequence of events in its entirety and re-writing it below. It doesn't look very elegant but I consider it to be proper policy for my purposes here.

  2. jack bog on 20 Oct 2003

    I think the county had until tomorrow to get the notice up on its web site. And although the district judge said to get the newspaper ads in for Sunday's edition, he also acknowledged that it may take The Oregonian longer than that to process the ad order. So I don't think there's a violation yet.

  3. Rebecca on 13 Apr 2004

    I am looking for the email address of the Multnomah County Circuit Court and cannot find it anywhere!! I cannot call because I am living in Italy, but I need the address. Anyone have it? Thank you.

Trackbacks (3)

  1. On to the Ninth Circus! -- er, I mean, Circuit on 20 Oct 2003

    Portland Communique reports that Judge Ancer Haggerty's preliminary injunction in the PUD election case (see details below) has been appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit....

  2. On to the Ninth Circus! -- er, I mean, Circuit on 21 Oct 2003

    Portland Communique reports that Judge Ancer Haggerty's preliminary injunction in the PUD election case (see details below) has been appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. UPDATE, 10/21, 4:29 a.m.: Still no corrective ads appear i...

  3. On to the Ninth Circus! -- er, I mean, Circuit on 22 Oct 2003

    Portland Communique reports that Judge Ancer Haggerty's preliminary injunction in the PUD election case (see details below) has been appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. UPDATE, 10/21, 4:29 a.m.: Still no corrective ads appear i...