By Miki Mullor

The November 18 hearing in Judge Brown’s courtroom lasted the entire day. The hearing was to determine whether the town violated the temporary restraining order (“TRO”) Judge Brown issued earlier this year. In the TRO, Judge Brown ordered the Town to not hold landowners “hostage” to the dispute between the Town and Mustang, the developer, by denying building permits on pretext.

Mustang moved to issue sanctions against the Town for continuing refusal of building permits which in their mind is a violation of the TRO. The Town denied it violated the TRO and explained in its response there are specific infrastructure and fire safety issues for which the permits were denied.

Mustang contended these issues were pretext.

The Nov 18 was an evidentiary hearing, in which the court heard testimony from various witnesses, including former Town officials, to determine whether the issues the Town raised in its rejection of building permits are valid or not.

If the Court found the issues valid, then there could be no violation of the TRO by the Town and the motion for sanctions by Mustang must be dismissed.

At the start of the hearing, the Town attorneys argued that even if the court finds the issues invalid, there can still be no violation of the TRO because the TRO did not specifically identified the infrastructure issues as potential pretext. Essentially, the Town argued that first the Court must find the issues invalid before any future denials can be seen as violation of the TRO. If the Court agreed with the Town, then even the Court found the issues the Town raised to be pretext, it wouldn’t issue sanctions unless the Town continued to reject building permits.

The court did not seem to buy the argument but the door was left open for a ruling later in the day after the evidence was presented.

The hearing lasted several hours in which multiple witnesses testified in person and over zoom over much of the history of the relationship between Mustang and the Town.

The hearing will continue on December 2 with closing arguments. The Court may or may not issue a ruling then.

Mustang LLC, the developer of Golden Eagle, has sued the City of Hideout over refusal to issue building permits to Golden Eagle land owners. A judge issued a TRO (Temporary Restraining Order), which compels the city to not arbitrarily refuse issuance of building permits.

After the city did not issue permits, Mustang filed a motion for sanctions – which means it is asking the judge to punish the city for ignoring the TRO.

The city replied with specific reasons for denying each and every pending permits, essentially telling the judge the denials were not arbitrary – and therefore the city has not violated the TRO.

A hearing in the matter in scheduled for Nov 18. The public may be able to watch the proceedings by zoom. Subscribe to receive the zoom details when we get it.