REVERSAL OF REVERSAL REVERSED

Good news, folks!

As you may recall, the Michigan Court of Appeals did an odd thing earlier this year.  Last February the appellate court, on its own initiative, vacated its June 2004 reversal of the Kent County Circuit Court's dismissal of our hazardous waste complaint against the City of Grand Rapids and the Boardwalk developers.  (We had alleged that the City sold the Monroe Avenue Water Filtration Plant to the developers in a sweetheart deal to use as a cheap -- and illegal -- dump for the contaminated soil they had to remove from the Boardwalk project site.)  The effect of this weird decision, if it were to stand, was to toss our complaint out of court.

Even more infuriorating about the appellate court's new decision is that we had acted upon its original decision to resume the case in the Kent County Circuit Court, where it had recently passed muster under the new rules for environmental citizen suits handed down last summer by the Michigan Supreme Court.  A lot of time and money spent in a good cause was about to go down the drain.  So, we asked the appellate court to reconsider its decision.

Yesterday, the Michigan Court of Appeals announced that it agreed with us and reinstated our case.  In short, it reversed its reversal of its reversal.  So we are now back on track and our hazardous waste complaint against the City and the Boardwalk developers moves forward.