Title
Expressing Council's profound disappointment in the City Solicitor's decision to file a brief advising the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that the City did not object to the relief requested in a lawsuit filed by the for-profit limited partnership seeking to develop the SugarHouse casino on the Philadelphia waterfront, and calling upon the City Solicitor to take immediate action seeking to have that filing withdrawn.
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WHEREAS, The City and City Council have been sued by a for-profit limited partnership seeking to develop the SugarHouse casino on the Philadelphia waterfront. That lawsuit seeks a judicial decree that legislation pending in City Council be deemed enacted; and
WHEREAS, The City and City Council have many procedural and substantive defenses to that suit, as more fully set forth in the brief filed in the matter on behalf of City Council and in a "friend of the court" brief filed on behalf of State Senator Vincent J. Fumo; and
WHEREAS, The City Solicitor embraced many of the arguments made by City Council and Senator Fumo in the City's response to a similar lawsuit filed by the for-profit limited partnership seeking to develop the Foxwoods casino on the Philadelphia waterfront; and
WHEREAS, Notwithstanding the legal views embraced by the City Solicitor in the Foxwoods case, and notwithstanding the numerous legal defenses the City Solicitor could and should have raised in defense of the City in the SugarHouse litigation, the City Solicitor instead filed a brief taking the position that "the City" had no objection to the relief being sought by the SugarHouse for-profit limited partnership; and
WHEREAS, Based on the City's prior position in the Foxwoods matter, Council believes it is beyond dispute that the City Solicitor's decision to "not object" to SugarHouse's requested relief was based not on the City Solicitor's best legal judgment as to whether the City had legally reasonable defenses to the suit, but was based on the City Sol...
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