NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Friday, December 13th, 2019

I‑976 legal challenge gets more complicated as court signs off on motions to intervene

The legal chal­lenge against Tim Eyman’s incred­i­bly destruc­tive Ini­tia­tive 976 appears poised to turn into quite the com­plex court­room drama.

Today, King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge Mar­shall Fer­gu­son ruled on a bevy of motions to inter­vene in the case. Pierce Coun­ty will be per­mit­ted to join the defense of Ini­tia­tive 976, as will Clint Didi­er and Tim Eyman, but not four oth­er indi­vid­u­als who had sought to inter­vene along­side Didier.

Ear­li­er this week, Judge Fer­gu­son allowed Wash­ing­ton ADAPT to inter­vene in the case in sup­port of the plain­tiffs; now the judge has allowed the afore­men­tioned par­ties to join the case in the defense of the initiative.

Mean­while, Tim Eyman’s effort to forcibly remove the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s office from the case failed. Judge Fer­gu­son denied Eyman’s motion to appoint out­side coun­sel, which means state attor­neys will con­tin­ue to defend Ini­tia­tive 976.

In his order, Fer­gu­son scold­ed Tim Eyman and his attor­neys for not prop­er­ly fol­low­ing court rules when they brought their Motion to Appoint.

“On a pro­ce­dur­al note, the Court observes that Pro­posed Inter­venors filed their Motion To Appoint on Decem­ber 4th, 2019, nine days before the Court entered today’s sep­a­rate order grant­i­ng them inter­venor sta­tus,” Judge Fer­gu­son wrote.

“The Pro­posed Inter­venors not­ed the Motion To Appoint to be heard with­out oral argu­ment on Decem­ber 13, 2019, the same hear­ing date as their inter­ven­tion motion. This was improp­er. Prospec­tive inter­venors are not par­ties and do not pos­sess stand­ing to seek any relief oth­er than leave to intervene.”

Empha­sis in the quote above is mine.

As a result of Fer­gu­son’s rul­ings, the par­ties in the case are now as follows:

GARFIELD COUNTY TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY; KING COUNTY; CITY OF SEATTLE; WASHINGTON STATE TRANSIT ASSOCIATION; ASSOCIATION  OF WASHINGTON CITIES; PORT OF SEATTLE; INTERCITY TRANSIT; AMALGAMATED TRANSIT UNION LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL OF WASHINGTON; and MICHAEL ROGERS,

Plain­tiffs,

and

WASHINGTON ADAPT,

Inter­venor-Plain­tiff,

v.

STATE OF WASHINGTON,

Defen­dant,

and

CLINT DIDIER; PERMANENT OFFENSE, TIMOTHY D. EYMAN, MICHAEL FAGAN; JACK FAGAN; and PIERCE COUNTY,

Inter­venor-Defen­dants.

So, as of today, we’ve got plain­tiffs, an inter­venor-plain­tiff, a defen­dant, and inter­venor-defen­dants. The attor­neys’ tables at the future hear­ings in this case are going to be mighty crowd­ed, it seems.

Inci­den­tal­ly, Tim Eyman has been false­ly alleg­ing for sev­er­al days now that Attor­ney Gen­er­al Fer­gu­son’s office had con­spired with the plain­tiffs in the I‑976 legal chal­lenge to pre­vent Pierce Coun­ty from inter­ven­ing in the case.

But nei­ther Fer­gu­son’s office nor the plain­tiffs opposed Pierce Coun­ty’s motion, and it was grant­ed unop­posed today. Don’t expect Eyman to apol­o­gize for being wrong and for ped­ding false­hoods, though. Lying is like breath­ing to Eyman.

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