{"id":2333,"date":"2013-04-10T12:45:52","date_gmt":"2013-04-10T16:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/?p=2333"},"modified":"2013-04-10T12:45:52","modified_gmt":"2013-04-10T16:45:52","slug":"polar-suit-dismissed-for-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/2013\/04\/10\/polar-suit-dismissed-for-now\/","title":{"rendered":"POLAR suit dismissed (for now)"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a while– about four months– since we last provided an update on the lawsuit filed by POLAR<\/a>\u00a0(the non-profit legal defense fund Protect Our Land and Rights<\/a> started by our friend Jeff Axt) in Oakland County Court. If you’ll recall, the suit sought an injunction against Enbridge, seeking Enbridge’s compliance with the “local consent” provision of the Michigan State Constitution, the state Highway Act, and the securing of all requisite environmental permits. If all of this is new to you or you’ve simply forgotten, our archives will provide you with a primer <\/a>and some extended discussions<\/a> of these matters.)<\/p>\n

Eventually, Enbridge sought to remove the case to federal court, where they expected to get a friendly hearing and have the case dismissed. \u00a0The federal judge did not dismiss the case, though he did rule that POLAR lacked standing in federal court. As a result, he remanded the case back to Oakland County. This seemed, at the time, potentially good news for POLAR (or so we thought<\/a>), since the county court, we hoped, would have much more interest in addressing the substantive state Constitutional matters at stake– waters into which we never thought the federal judge would want to wade. We were even more hopeful given the history of the Oakland County Judge assigned to the case, Phyllis McMillen, who ruled favorably toward landowners<\/a> in some of Enbridge’s condemnation suits.<\/p>\n

Well, two weeks ago, Judge McMillen dismissed the POLAR case, finally ending the suit. The grounds of her dismissal? Not surprisingly, it was the old issue of standing. The ruling states, “At issue in the present case is whether POLAR has alleged damages of a special character distinct and different from the injury suffered by the public generally.” Then, after rehearsing POLAR’s claims about damages to its members, McMillen says,<\/p>\n

To the extent that these paragraphs allege damages to the community as a whole, they would not qualify as special damages. As it relates to allegations of damage to POLAR’s members’ property, the alleged harm does not result from Enbridge’s alleged violation of the laws cited, i.e., failure to obtain consents and permits. Even if the proper consents and permits are acquired, Enbridg’e activities will have the same impact on the members’ proerty, and same will be perfectly lawful. Without a showing that the potential harm is “resulting from” the failure to obtain the consents and permits, POLAR has failed to allege special damages. Because POLAR has failed to allege special damages, it lacks standing to pursue the claims.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the bright side, what this means is that Judge McMillen– not unlike the federal judge– did not rule on the substantive questions in the suit (ie, whether Enbridge is required to seek “local consent,”<\/a> whether Enbridge is a “common carrier,”<\/a> etc.). What’s more, Enbridge asked to have the suit dismissed “with prejudice,” which essentially would have meant that POLAR could not refile the suit. But McMillen chose to dismiss “without prejudice,” which means that her ruling was confined strictly to the procedural matter of standing. So the substantive questions live and could be raised again in a new filing.<\/p>\n

So POLAR’s not finished yet. They are pursuing other legal avenues as well, including appeals of the MPSC rulings in both Phases 1 and 2, appeals that are still pending. We will do our best to keep you updated.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a while– about four months– since we last provided an update on the lawsuit filed by POLAR\u00a0(the non-profit legal defense fund Protect Our Land and Rights started by our friend Jeff Axt) in Oakland County Court. If you’ll recall, the suit sought an injunction against Enbridge, seeking Enbridge’s compliance with the “local consent” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-legal","category-polar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2333"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2335,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333\/revisions\/2335"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grangehallpress.com\/Enbridgeblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}