Meaford councillor and mayoral candidate Jim McPherson issued a press release Monday aimed at educating voters about the facts surrounding the Georgian Beach lawsuit which has become a hot button issue in the election campaign.
In particular McPherson is concerned about the issue of insurance as it pertains to the lawsuit.
“There is a story going around that we are somehow insured if we lose this case. There are two issues that must be made clear. The first issue is if we lose to the defendants we are not covered for their costs. The second issue is we are not insured for our costs in the original suit,” says McPherson in the release.
The lawsuit involves a dispute over what is today a footpath, but was once a road allowance. Some property owners had erected barricades to mark their property on the water side of their properties, and the municipality had asked that those barricades be removed.
In 2007 Council and municipal staff determined that a bylaw from the year 1854 supported the municipal position that the land in question was indeed a municipal road, and a lawsuit was subsequently initiated against a limited number of property owners.
This summer when the case made it into a courtroom the court ruled that the municipality must include all property owners affected by the 1854 bylaw and as a result there are now more than 70 properties involved in the legal mess.
In an attempt to try and cut their losses and work toward a mediated settlement, Council responded to the expanded scope of the lawsuit by passing a resolution to withdraw from the legal action.
“The resolution was passed and Staff were instructed to aid us in doing this. Our Municipal lawyers did not recommend this action, but suggested if we wished to pursue this we should pass a first and second reading of a bylaw intending to withdraw our actions of 2007,” says McPherson of the plan.
“This is a straightforward normal legal strategy that would free the parties to attempt to negotiate a settlement with the original defendants. However, there are parties out there who may still want their day in Court no matter what the cost and whom they are hurting. This is, after all, not their money; it is public money. So it could be in some people's interest to spread disinformation that Council intended to pass all three readings at the same time and that as a consequence, Meaford's insurers and lawyers would have removed themselves from the case, placing the municipality in greater financial jeopardy. It's a scary story, but it's just not so,” McPherson stated in the press release.
With the case continuing McPherson says that people should not be fooled into thinking that if the municipality loses in court that any losses will be covered by insurance. McPherson in fact wants to make it clear that with regard to the original lawsuit filed by the municipality there is no insurance coverage at all. The only legal action with regard to Georgian Beach that the municipality has insurance coverage for are the subsequent lawsuits that have been filed against the municipality.
“People seem to believe we are somehow insured if we lose this case. The fact is, we are not insured for our original suit. We are not covered for any of our costs or those of any of the defendants in this suit if we lose. We are insured for the law suits against the municipality that have arisen from this original law suit and these law suits will be handled by our insurer's lawyers. When you deliberately burn your house down, you do not get to collect insurance. And you don't get to be insured when you initiate a law suit,” said McPherson.
The Meaford Independent contacted an agent for Cowan Insurance who insures the municipality. The agent would not comment on the details of the coverage provided to the municipality citing confidentiality rules.
The case has according to McPherson, cost the municipality in excess of $700,000 in the last three years, and with finally entering a courtroom this summer, and the scope of the lawsuit expanded to include more property owners, McPherson speculates that legal costs will rise dramatically.
“Does it really make sense for this municipality to sue over 70 of its law abiding citizens who have faithfully paid their taxes throughout many long years?” asks McPherson adding, “We need to straighten this out so that we can all move on. There are two very important issues that must be made clear. If we lose the Georgian Beach law suit, we are not insured for the costs of the defendants, which at this point number over 70 individuals. And we are not insured for any of our costs in this original law suit.”
