[Toll Bridge Facts.com Editor: On May 18, 2007, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Borman ruled that Michigan statutory law requires the Township Board to pay for the GIBC's successful defense.
Read the transcript from the September 21, 2007 hearing about the Township Board's disqualification motion and draw your own conclusions about what the Township Board is really doing by appealing and delaying the resolution of their eminent domain lawsuit against the GIBC.]
http://www.ilecamera.com/stories/110907/loc_20071109003.shtml
Disqualification motion is denied
By Lena Khzouz, The Ile Camera
PUBLISHED: November 9, 2007
A second judge has disagreed with the township in relation to a motion in a debate with Grosse Ile Bridge Co. over lawsuit attorney fees.
Grosse Ile Township leaders had said that a judge who is hearing the fee debate regarding the bridge lawsuit should not settle the debate. But that judge and now a second judge disagree with the township.
The township's motion said that Wayne County District Judge Susan Borman should recuse herself from deciding the fee debate.
The township had said that Borman and an attorney who is representing the bridge company, Alan Ackerman, had a business investment relationship in a parking structure in Detroit.
Borman refused to give up the case, as the township suggested she should do.
The issue was then supposed to be decided by the chief judge of Wayne County Circuit Court, Mary Beth Kelly.
She did recuse herself because she is a Grosse Ile resident, according to Tim Galligan, an attorney who represents the township.
Instead of Kelly, Wayne County Circuit Judge William Giovan decided on the township's motion for disqualification.
Giovan agreed with Borman's decision.
Galligan said the main reason Giovan gave is that he did not view the partnership in the business entity as an active partnership but as a limited partnership. Giovan said that did not warrant disqualifying Borman from deciding the attorney fee debate.
Now, one of the remaining outstanding issues in the eminent domain case is to determine whether or not the privately owned bridge company's attorney is entitled to recover all or some of his attorney fees from the township.
The overall issue goes back a few years, when the township tried to take the bridge from the Grosse Ile Bridge Co. based on what the township identified as eminent domain rights.
A second bridge near the island's south end is owned by Wayne County. That public span provides free access to the island.
Township leaders had argued, however, that they should have control of the private bridge for the safety of the island and its residents.
The issue was in the court system for years, but the final ruling was in the bridge company's favor.
Now, Ackerman is trying to obtain his attorney fees from the township.
The township, however, has argued that the bridge company did not actually hand money over to its attorney. The township, therefore, is questioning if it is responsible for the attorney fees at all as there is no money to hand back to the bridge company.
In relation to that aspect, the township had filed the motion saying that Borman should excuse herself from deciding that fee debate.
But Borman disagreed, and then Giovan disagreed, leaving the fee debate in Borman's hands.
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