More on the anti-rail "lawsuit"

Here's the Chron story about the "lawsuit" filed against Metro yesterday. As was the case in the earlier coverage, the action is mis-identified. It's not a lawsuit but a section 202 motion, which is intended to let someone who is thinking about filing a suit do some discovery beforehand. As I understand it, the state district court judge (and alas, neither story so far has identified the court in which this motion was filed, so I haven't found it to link to yet) rules whether or not there's grounds to conduct such discovery - in other words, whether this is in fact a fishing expedition or not - and if so, then what they find can be used in the suit they eventually file. Point is, the suit ain't been filed yet. If the motion is not granted, it may never be filed.

Anyway, it should be clear that what was filed wasn't a lawsuit:

The lawsuit by Richmond Avenue resident and merchant Daphne Scarborough asks a state district court to order Metropolitan Transit Authority officials to answer questions under oath about Metro's plans and finances.

Lawyer Andy Taylor said the purpose is to find out whether Metro intends to comply with various terms of the referendum in which voters narrowly approved a long-term transit plan the agency calls Metro Solutions.

Should an actual suit be filed, it will be to force Metro to build the line on Westpark, or to enjoin them from building it on Richmond, not to make them answer questions about their intentions. It would be nice if the coverage of this were more clear on that point.

I neither know what will happen, nor when it may happen. Perhaps future coverage, which will hopefully indicate whose court this is in, will give some clue as to the timeline. In the meantime, we'll see how Metro responds. Stay tuned.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on April 13, 2007 to Planes, Trains, and Automobiles