COUPEVILLE — A lawsuit against Island County, filed by the county’s newest commissioner, has been dismissed.
Island County Superior Court Judge Alan Hancock last week said claims alleged in the lawsuit filed last year by current County Commissioner Kelly Emerson and her husband had no merit.
When contacted, Emerson said she and her husband had not decided whether to appeal the ruling and that she would not be available for further comment until Monday.
On the eve of Election Day last November, Kelly and Kenneth Emerson sued her political opponent, John Dean, the incumbent county commissioner, saying he used his position to alert county planning director Robert Pederson and building inspector Ron Slechta to a construction project at the Emerson home.
That act, the Emersons claimed, was intended to kill her political campaign.
The Emersons, however, had not applied for building permits to build a deck, a patio, a retaining wall and a sunroom, even though they had been told two years earlier that any development on their property would require approval by the Island County planning department. The property includes a wetlands area, considered sensitive under state environmental laws.
The lawsuit also alleged that the building inspector trespassed on the Emersons’ property when he delivered a stop-work order at their home.
Emerson defeated Dean in the election to represent Camano Island and north Whidbey Island on the three-member board of county commissioners.
At the time the lawsuit was filed, Emerson said that her complaint was with the two county employees and Dean, and that she didn’t want to cost county taxpayers money. In January, however, her attorney amended the complaint to include Island County as a party in the suit. The motion also sought an injunction to stop the county’s code enforcement and mounting fines against the Emersons.
At a summary judgment hearing in court in May, the Emersons abandoned their claims of defamation, due process violations and consumer protection act violations.
Their sole claim, then, became that the county building inspector trespassed and violated the Emersons’ civil rights under the Fourth Amendment, which deals with protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Judge Hancock said in his ruling that the building inspector had a right to go onto the Emerson property to check out a suspected code violation and that the Fourth Amendment was not at issue.
In conclusion, Hancock wrote that the Emersons’ request in the claim to waive county fines — now surpassing $50,000 — must be dismissed because “none of their claims have any merit.”
Former commissioner Dean said the Emersons aren’t the first property owners in Island County who believed they were exempt from county regulations formally adopted in public meetings years ago.
“The Emersons and their attorney fought a phantom and took Island County down into the rabbit hole,” Dean said. “As one of Kelly’s editorial endorsers wrote this week, ‘the legal action they brought was based on a fantasy world.’ “
Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com.
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