Fresh Loaf

A Fulton County Superior Court judge yesterday ruled in favor of the Atlanta Botanical Garden in its case against Friends of Piedmont Park, the nonprofit citizens’ group that fought a parking deck in the city’s iconic Midtown greenspace.

Judge T. Jackson Bedford determined two of the four claims filed by the garden against the group were “without merit” and ordered lawyers from the two sides to assess damages in the next two weeks.

The garden initially sought $290,000 in damages they say were incurred because of the contentious legal fight that erupted in 2005 when it announced plans for a 800-space parking deck inside the park. Friends of Piedmont Park and other neighborhood activists fought the project on the argument that a taxpayer-funded public space should not gift property to a private nonprofit organization without public engagement and input. The bitter dispute raged both in court documents and yard signs and divided nearby residents and the city at large.

The Atlanta City Council voted for the deck and Mayor Shirley Franklin signed its legislation later that year. The deck is scheduled to open in May and according to Mary Pat Matheson, the garden’s executive director, it will be virtually unseen, grant more access to the park, and potentially boast LEED-certification.

Matheson says she is “obviously very pleased” with Bedford’s ruling. Doug Abramson of Friends of Piedmont Park declined comment.

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Friends of Piedmont Park, the nonprofit park advocacy group that was one of the most vocal opponents against the Piedmont Park parking deck, responded today to the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s claim seeking $273,000 in legal fees after last year’s bitter Open Records dispute. The nonprofit group filed an answer motion to contest the garden’s claim that the entire brouhaha was “frivolous.”

We haven’t had the chance to sift through every word of the 34-page document, but Abramson says it states why FOPP thinks it was justified for testing the garden’s refusal to open its financial records based on its private, nonprofit status.

“It explains why the standard of being ‘frivolous’ was not met,” Doug Abramson, president of FOPP, said in a phone interview. “It was anything but ‘frivolous.’”

He calls the garden’s $273,000 claim an act of vengeance and a warning to other organizations against following its example. The garden says FOPP’s lawsuit forced them to divert money from exhibit and operations budgets in order to pay its lawyers.

We’ll stay on top of it. In the meantime, click here to peruse FOPP’s 34-page response to the garden’s $273,000 “request.” (Heads-up: It’s a Word document.)

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Well, that went relatively unnoticed.

On Dec. 7, 2007, the Atlanta Botanical Garden filed a $273,000 lawsuit against the Friends of Piedmont Park and Doug Abramson, the park advocacy group’s president. The garden claims that because of an earlier suit filed by Abramson seeking the garden’s financial records, it had to spend unbudgeted funds — almost $300,000, according to a garden spokesperson — on a legal defense contesting the suit.

In 2004, the garden pushed for a parking deck in Atlanta’s most iconic greenspace to accommodate more visitors. The Piedmont Park Conservancy backed the idea.

FOPP, however, along with many other voices in the community, didn’t like the sound of that, and fought the project with gusto. After a series of lawsuits and a lot of yard signs, a judge in September said it came down to this: The deck’s getting built and the garden doesn’t have to disclose its financial records — it was and is, the judge said, a private, nonprofit entity.

(For an excellent rundown and take on the parking deck debate, click here for former CL staff writer Michael Wall’s “Welcome to Piedmont Parking Deck.”)

The garden says that FOPP’s lawsuit was “frivolous” — a legal imbroglio that was a whole lotta legwork, paperwork and headache. And now FOPP is being handed a $273,000 bill for legal fees, which the garden claims it had to divert from other projects in order to pay.

Click here to read the garden’s lawsuit against FOPP.

And from Doug Abramson at FOPP’s website:

Central to the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s claim for fees is the unwarranted contention that Friends of Piedmont Park was “frivolous” in its attempt to secure a judge’s ruling that the Botanical Garden must comply with open records laws. Frivolous? Hardly. Determining whether the Atlanta Botanical Garden, as a steward of public land, should be treated as a public agency is an important policy question. An impressive group of First Amendment advocates supports our position. Before going to court, Friends of Piedmont Park sought an opinion from the Georgia Attorney General’s office on this issue. Initially the AG supported the position that the Atlanta Botanical Garden is subject to Georgia’s Sunshine Laws and should turn over documents. Later, after our suit was filed and the AG’s office consulted with Botanical Garden attorneys, the Department of Law wrote that “substantial questions remain as to whether the Garden is in fact covered by [the Georgia Open Records and Open Meetings Act].” By no stretch was it frivolous to ask a judge to resolve these “substantial questions.

A call to Doug Abramson’s residence was met by an answering machine. We’ll keep an eye on this one.

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