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Judge Tosses Island Lawsuit
By Islomaniac | April 4, 2007
I guess we can call it Environmentalist zero, developers one. Although this is local news I thought many of you would be interested in reading how a grassroots organization is trying to protect an island for public use after it was sold to a man who is interested on keeping who new private island exactly that, private.
Mary C. Schneidau
The Capital
Calling its effort to protect public access to a private island on the
Undeterred by the courtroom defeat, however, the Magothy River Association immediately approached
The offer came minutes after Circuit Court Judge Paul G. Goetzke said allowing the lawsuit to move forward would have thwarted Mr. Clickner’s due process and property rights.
“If you have this type of … vigilante taking, the property rights may be at risk,” he said.
The ruling was the latest development in a legal battle that started when Mr. Clickner bought the 7.1-acre island in 2004 and announced plans to build a house and piers.
Mr. Clickner decided not to allow boaters and swimmers to use the island’s beach, though previous owners had accepted the practice for decades.
In December, the county approved variances to allow Mr. Clickner to build on the island, located within the protected Critical Area. Since then, Mr. Clickner said he’s received offers of up to $10 million for the island.
A day after that ruling, the Magothy River Association and five riverfront property owners sued Mr. Clickner over a fence he placed along a portion of the beach on the island.
The chain and post fence, installed last summer, is designed to keep boaters off the island. The lawsuit claimed that “continuous, uninterrupted use of the island for over 20 years has established a prescriptive easement in favor of the public for use of the island and the beach.”
The hearing in
In addition to seeking public access, the lawsuit claimed that the fence improperly marked the mean high-water line. Water below that point is public property.
Instead, Judge Goetzke threw out the entire lawsuit, including the request for class-action status. In a hearing that lasted just over an hour, he repeatedly asked the attorney for the association how public use of the beach would be regulated and what effect the lawsuit could have on other issues of private property.
Association attorney Ann Fligsten countered that the hearing was only supposed to determine whether the lawsuit could proceed. She said the merits of the case should be discussed later.
After the ruling, Ms. Fligsten approached Mr. Clickner and told him the association is willing to buy
“We’re trying to come up with some way to co-exist,” Mr. Clickner said. “All of their plans exclude us and we don’t see any way to come to any conclusions with us being excluded.”
The association and homeowners also are considering whether to appeal yesterday’s ruling, Ms. Fligsten said.
The association and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation are also appealing the county’s variance decision.
Dobbins is one of two disputed islands in the Magothy. A dispute over a home built without permits on Little Island is expected to take years to work its way through the courts.
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March 13th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Why didn’t the MRA and/or CBF purchase the island when it was up for sale originally (or one of the previous sells)? It seems that Mr. Clickner purchased the island legally and initiated all the appropriate paperwork to attain the permist to build.
As a high-school youth in the 90’s my friends and I used to swim or boat out to the island (to explore), I don’t recall the MRA or CBF ever ‘maintaining’ the island. In many cases the beach was filled beer cans and bottles, trash, discarded food, condoms, drugs, in addition to the many fights that I witnessed.
I always thought the island would be a pretty nice place if someone took care of it.
Now someone owns it, and wants to maintain it, and they are not named Paul Spadaro…so its a problem.
Just because it was unowned, public’ or what ever the case may be, doesn’t mean just because everyone has partied their, they have some claim to it. I used live near the woods in Forest Glen, and played all the time in those woods. Then houses were built, I couldn’t go into Windemere and play next to peoples’ houses now. They own it now.
Mr. Clickner is doing something good. No one maintained Dobbins in past or at least in recent history.