By By Suzanne Monk / managing editor
June 30, 2002
Chancery Judge Jerry Mason will be meeting sometime soon with lawyers from both sides in a lawsuit of sorts filed in February 2001 by the town of Marion against the city of Meridian.
Attorney Tom Goldman filed the complaint after Meridian raised Marion's sewer rates from 67 cents per thousand gallons to $2.43 per thousand gallons. Attempts to discuss the situation failed, and Goldman asked the judge to mediate the dispute.
Goldman says Meridian is bound by a 25-year service contract signed in 1986. Meridian attorney Bill Hammack says the decisions of one city council cannot bind future councils. Hammack asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit, but Mason declined to do so earlier this month.
So, there's going to be a trial.
I'm sure there are subtleties about this question of making agreements that bind future councils that I don't understand, but how can you make any progress as a city if the current council's decisions may be reversed after the next election? How do you issue bonds? How do you build industrial parks and renovate opera houses? How do you make promises to Cooper Land Development?
Quick takes:
Death row: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 20 that it is unconstitutional to execute retarded prisoners. At least one death row inmate in Mississippi, Jimmy Mack, has already asked the state Supreme Court to commute his sentence to life without the possibility of parole. Mack's attorney is Charles Press of San Francisco. Press says Mack's IQ is no higher than 74, and that he functions at the same intellectual level as a child between the ages of 6 and 8.
MADD in court: Danny Berry, head of Mothers Against Drunk Driving in Mississippi, was in Meridian Municipal Court on Thursday. The DUI trial of a local attorney was scheduled, but the defendant was in U.S. District Court in Jackson representing someone, not being tried for something. Berry said he came because his office had received a number of phone calls from concerned citizens.
Court records listing: A lady called me this week to ask which of our misdemeanor judges, in Meridian Municipal Court or Lauderdale County Justice Court, has suddenly begun dismissing so many charges.
The answer is that there are no more dismissals now than there ever were. You've just never seen them before two weeks ago, when The Meridian Star changed its court records policy to reflect not just convictions but also acquittals and dismissals.
This means the court records listing is much longer than it used to be. In the first weeks of the new policy, publication of court records began on Saturday and continued in Sunday, Monday and Tuesday's editions. That seemed cumbersome, so we have made another change.
From now on, all of each week's court records will run on their own page in Saturday's paper. And, we have added a glossary of abbreviations that make it possible to translate a listing like: "John Smith, DUI first offense, MASEP, VIP in lieu of two days jail, $600 fine."