Court Ruling Sets Aside 1998 and 2006 Agreements

Leelanau Township and local attorney Thomas Oehmke, who filed suit for several neighbors of the Timber Shores property, have lost their case. Earlier this week Judge Kevin Elsenheimer ruled that two agreements the township and the neighbors wanted to have enforced were "null, void and unenforceable."

Timber Shores' position was that the agreements were void. The court agreed, ending what appears to many to be another tactic taken on by the township and neighboring property owners to impede the proposed development of the Timber Shores RV Resort at the expense of township residents who must foot the bill for legal expenses.

The lawsuit revolved around two agreements regarding sewage and wastewater treatment at proposed developments. One was a 1998 agreement executed for the proposed Ennis Creek Development and one in 2006 for a planned unit development (PUD) on the Timber Shores site. Neither of those projects were developed.

Before the lawsuit, Timber Shores believed that it had an agreement with the Township’s counsel to prepare and file paperwork to clear the defunct agreements from the title record and draft documents were exchanged between the Township’s attorney and representatives of Timber Shores. However, the township then changed course and began claiming that the agreements "ran with the land," which could require Timber Shores to pay for an extension and expansion of the NLTUA sewer system.

Instead of taking a simple, inexpensive action to acknowledge that the agreements no longer applied, which is a straightforward legal procedural step, the township filed suit and attorney Oehmke joined in on behalf of some of the Timber Shores property neighbors. The court’s ruling put an end to those claims. However, the Township’s choice of filing a lawsuit instead of agreeing to simply acknowledge the obvious fact that the documents no longer applied is another example of the township spending taxpayer money on legal proceedings.

Click this link to read the full court opinion.