Attorneys filed proposed orders Friday in a case in which McIntosh County officials rezoned Sapelo Island’s historic Hogg Hummock.
Hogg Hummock residents, descendants of enslaved people who were brought to Sapelo Island from West Africa, fear the bigger houses allowed by the rezoning will lead to higher taxes and ultimately force out the remaining members of their community. Nine residents filed a complaint in October seeking to reverse the zoning changes. The county responded with a motion to dismiss in December.
Judge D. Jay Stewart heard oral arguments on the county’s motion last month in McIntosh County Superior Court and requested the orders.
The proposed orders, each 10 pages long, describe what the opposing sides want the judge to decide. Each gives a legal analysis and provides the case law that buttresses their argument.
Read the county’s proposed order here.
Read the residents’ proposed order here.
Writing for the county, Attorney Ken Jarrard and his colleagues at Jarrard & Davis argue that the complaint is fatally flawed and cannot be fixed because it originally named the county commissioners individually as defendants. A Georgia constitutional amendment voters passed in 2020 regarding the waiver of sovereign immunity allows only the state, county or municipality, not individuals, to be sued.
“Because Plaintiffs did not comply with the mandatory pleading requirements of Ga. Const. Art. I, § 2, ¶ V(b)(2), Defendants moved to dismiss the Complaint asserting the entire action was barred by sovereign immunity,” the county’s attorneys wrote.
Representing the Sapelo residents are attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law Center and Jason Carter, an attorney with Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore. They argue for the judge to allow the case to continue in part because they amended the complaint in December to name only the county as the defendant.
“Under Georgia law, parties are permitted to amend a ‘pleading as a matter of course and without leave of court at any time before the entry of a pretrial order,'” they wrote.
The Tide brings information and observations from The Current staff.