Attorneys for the star-crossed Ocean Concrete plant near Sebastian have urged the Florida Supreme Court to reject Indian River County’s appeal of a $3.3 million judicial award in its 14-year-old property rights case.
Ocean Concrete Inc., and owner George Maib have faced “delay and distortion tactics from the county,” asserted their attorney, Geoffrey D. Smith of Melbourne, in a March 29 legal brief filed with the high court.
Indian River County filed notice of the appeal in the state’s highest court on Feb. 22 after the 4th District Court of Appeals in West Palm Beach denied a motion for a rehearing of the case after Maib won his lawsuit against the county for unfairly stopping him from building a concrete batching plant on land he owned.
“We would hope to get a new hearing on a trial on damages,” said County Attorney Dylan Reingold last Thursday in regard to the last-ditch appeal.
The full 4th District Court of Appeals affirmed a Nov. 25 order by a three-judge panel upholding the original judge’s rulings in a 2019 trial that resulted in a $2 million jury verdict in favor of Ocean Concrete, plus $1.3 million in pre-judgement interest.
Indian River County claims the trial judge erred by allowing Maib to testify about his opinion of the value of the proposed concrete batch plant on an 8.5-acre site on Old Dixie Highway near Sebastian, while excluding the testimony of the county’s economist and appraiser.
The county asked the Florida Supreme Court to hear the appeal because it affects the ability of all County Commissions throughout the state to deal with property rights claims under the Bert J. Harris Jr. Private Property Rights Protection Act, County Attorney Dylan Reingold wrote in a legal brief.
But Smith, Ocean Concrete’s attorney, argued the “appeal is limited to a review of the trial judge’s evidentiary rulings in a jury trial on damages.
“Simply put, the 4th DCA found that the trial judge properly exercised her discretion on admissibility of specific testimony and evidence where liability has been previously determined in a prior proceeding,” Smith wrote. “It has no specific application to any class of constitutional officers.”
Ocean Concrete filed suit against the county in November 2007 after county commissioners removed concrete batch plants from the uses permitted on light industrial parcels while county planners were already reviewing the company’s site plan for a concrete batch plant on light industrial land it purchased in 2004.
Maib summed up the situation this way: “I started this project in 2003, 18 years ago. Under reasonable circumstances, with reasonable governance, this would have been over many, many years ago. I have fought through the best, most productive years of my life with an unreasonable cast of characters and the public has foot the bill.”