If I read it correctly, a recent news article reported that the City of Georgetown paid $50,000.00 in attorney fees in its failed effort to enforce its own zoning ordinance against Liberty Steel. Having done so, it abandoned its efforts without getting even a concession that the portion of the property between Wood and Dozier Streets had not been used for heavy industrial purposes for several years now. (Damn it, any damned fool with a pair of eyes knows that!) In abandoning its enforcement effort, the city did not get an admission from Liberty that it had not used the melt shop and bag house for any heavy industrial purpose for several years either. Assuming that the lawyer for the city spent 100 hours working on the case (which I doubt), the city will have compensated him for his lack of success at a rate of $500.00 per hour. What did it get for its money?
Not a damned thing. At a minimum it should have extracted a concession from Liberty that both the Wood to Dozier property and the bag house/melt shop portion of the property are now properly zoned for "mixed use" rather than "heavy industrial use" under the express and unambiguous terms of the municipal zoning ordinance. That's just a fact, plain and simple. Dismissal of the city's claim against Liberty vis-a-vis the rolling mill should have conditioned on that concession in my view.
Any lawyer has to be pretty brazen to charge $500.00 an hour for unsuccessful work. No matter how high opinion a lawyer has of him or herself, there's a big difference between being brazen and being skillful. The former is reflected in the "up front" charge -- in this instance, reportedly $50,000.00 -- and the latter is proven by results. In this case he didn't get anything.
But what the hell, its only taxpayer money and we're all quite used to not getting anything for it. Perhaps we're a little to accustomed.
