Saturday, June 16, 2018

Norwood lawsuit is settled
A lawsuit filed by Don and Gayleynne Norwood naming Cocke County and the Cocke County Regional Planning Commission has been resolved, but may have an impact on Cocke County's road requirements. According to the Cocke County Circuit Court lawsuit, several years ago the Norwood’s developed a “high-end residential community” known as the Critter Mountain Estates in the Edwina community. The plan for the development, approved by the Planning Commission, called for a public road to be constructed and the developers posted a letter of credit to guarantee the quality of road construction. In that way the county would not be responsible for maintenance of a poor road in the future. The letter of credit was required because in the past some developers have built poor roads in developments and then left the taxpayers to pay for future maintenance and upgrades. But the road in question was not constructed to required standards. Later because the road was not built, the planning commission “called” the letter of credit, and had plans to use the money to construct as much of the planned road as possible with the amount of money available. The Norwood couple then filed a lawsuit alleging that several of the Planning officials met in secret to develop the road construction requirements. The regulations had been enacted by the planning commission and the county legislative body approved the requirements, but because the regulations were allegedly developed in secret, the lawsuit charged the road requirement was “void and of no effect.” Circuit Judge Duane Slone ruled the officials are immune from lawsuit in their individual capacity, and he held that members of the Planning Commission did not violate the Open Meetings Act. The order settling the litigation came after all of the owners of property in Critter Mountain Estates agreed to a private right-of-way maintenance, meaning the county will not be responsible for maintaining the road in the future. The settlement, approved in a closed session of the Cocke County Legislative Body, provides that Cocke County will pay the court costs associated with the lawsuit. In addition either the county or it's insurance carrier will pay the charges of attorney Nathaniel D. Moore who represented the county.


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