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Editor's Notes: Suing up a storm or two
editor's notes

I preface this by saying that lawyers make me nervous.

Maybe that’s because I know they’re smarter than me, and they know they’re smarter than me, and they know I know they’re smarter than me.

That whole dynamic or whatever it is tends to put conversations on an awkward footing right off the bat. It also doesn’t help some barristers eyeball me like they’re not-so-secretly wondering how much my fleece would go for in Superior Court in front of the right judge and jury.

Answer: Not much. I’m not a lawyer or in real estate. That said, I’m thinking about getting a lawyer, a mean one, with snarling big teeth and a tailored suit and a habit of barking “objection” at people when he doesn’t like what they say.

Why, you ask? Because all the lawsuits flying around here these days have made me want to sue somebody, too.

Should you not know what lawsuits I’m referring to, well, Richmond Hill is suing Bryan County, and the Homebuilders Association of Greater Savannah, or maybe it’s the Greater Savannah Area Homebuilders Association, but whichever one it calls itself is suing the county.

For all I know, both entities may have valid points and I’m not offering an opinion on the merits of either case, so let’s make that clear.

Besides, you can’t deny someone their day in court, especially if they sue you.

But it’s somewhat traumatizing, I hear, to get sued. In fact, I understand from an anonymous source named Ewell Seymour that newly elected County Commissioner Gene Wallace said somewhat mournfully that he’d been a dentist for more than 30 years and never got sued once, but he’s been on the county commission less than three months and has already been sued twice.

Disclaimer: Keep in mind those are two lawsuits I happen to know about. Given the fact as a member of the press I’m usually next-to- last to know anything, there could be dozens more lawsuits lurking out there, waiting on someone to go on Facebook and explain what’s really happening. Also, I’ve yet to be sued for being a reporter or editor, though some folks have said on call-in whine lines that I should be arrested for impersonating a journalist.

If I knew who they were, I’d start my new career in bringing legal action by suing them, just for practice. And then I’d file a suit, or my ferocious lawyer would, against whoever it was that turned the once near idyllic,laid back Coastal Empire into a giant subdivision slash outlet mall slash traffic nightmare slash fast food court slash warehouse slash go cart track park slash south New Jersey.

I thought of that Monday when I had to get to Pembroke early to sit in on a court hearing.

I had time to think because I was late to the hearing and eventually missed it. That because, well, being late is what tends to happen around here anymore when you try to be somewhere and can’t leave an hour early.

In my case you have to leave early partly in order to get around the school traffic that didn’t exist a decade ago. That was because there was no school just down the road then, but we had to have one for all the new kids who came with families filling up all the new houses built because, well, just about everybody in local government from one end of Georgia to the other seemed a developer of one sort or another and they helped make it happen because it was good for the community. Naturally, those kids are dropped off by parents who got here a month ago and now complain about the traffic and the growth.

But at the same time, there’s go to work traffic racing the school traffic, and on Monday there was a another wreck somewhere down one road and traffic was backed up in all the usual places, only 10 times worse. So, people were taking back ways to work and flying 60 mph down side streets trying to be first to get to the stop sign so they could pull out in front of somebody and get to the next stop sign and repeat the process until they went over railroad tracks and ended up either in Pooler or Ellabell or swung back toward Garden City or across the river and over into Savannah or down to Richmond Hill.

It’s a mess, is what it is.

I should sue speeding drivers too, come to think of it. They’re a menace. So are the clowns who toss empty spiced rum mini bottles and soiled disposable diapers into my ditches. What kind of parties do young people go to these days? But never mind.

There are those who want to be allowed to continue to build much as they always have, and they’re working at keeping things the same in the courts and the state legislature through a bill known as HB 302 and that’s fine.

It’s a free country when you’ve got money.

Now, perhaps it’s time for citizen’s groups to band together and lawyer up, if for no other reason than for the right to help decide how and how fast the Coastal Empire should grow.slash industrial

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