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(Editor’s Note: OMP resident Todd Anson has a few thoughts about the winery lawsuit below. If you have an opinion on the lawsuit or other township matters, feel free to write it up and send it to me, [email protected]. -jb)
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OMP Neighbors,
I believe this to be our hard truth. My previous post [on the NextDoor app] called for our community to align around settlement, citing my many years’ managing and funding complex litigation.
I’ll start by clarifying that I am not invested in any of the personalities involved (I don’t know them). I believe today’s fortunate Old Mission Peninsula residents have some responsibility to support reasonable opportunities for tomorrow’s Americans, so push back against NIMBY-ism. And I believe that agricultural and related uses ensure economic vitality that act as a long term guarantee of the open space viewed as sacred on the OMP.
Played correctly, to me it offers the “win-win.” Overplayed due to listening to NIMBY’s, and you get what we all just got, a $50M slap in the face by a federal judge.
A Situation Rife With Toxicity
This situation is rife with toxicity (pitting neighbor vs. neighbor; the Township vs. our local businesses owned by neighbors that guarantee us open space and stave off tract housing development; significant concerns about Township leadership’s decisions; enormous and divisive amounts of exposure to damages; AND, perhaps most importantly, decision-making placed in the hands of a small board, each only bearing a tiny fraction of the economic consequences of their decisions, among other toxic concerns).
The Township got drubbed. Emasculated. Stuffed. WOMPED. Deservedly so, because “we didn’t even show up” in court until it was too late, thanks to our Township leadership’s poor judgment in leaving our representation in this serious matter with enormous consequences to a small-time municipal law firm. Our leadership led us into a gun fight facing automatic weapons with a musket.
I would much rather see $50 million put into the OMP community rather than using it to pay off a lawsuit precipitated by a small group pulling up the ladder because “they got theirs.”
I’ll also put this out there — we enjoy the light commerce and festive summer atmosphere created by the wineries. We see that supporting these businesses essentially guarantees their perpetuity in open space.
I was surprised by the tone at the Monday, July 14 forum given the gravity of the exposure created for our citizens. Rather than contrition, respect and fear, I witnessed contempt and recklessness on the part of those now seeking to double down with our wallets. Let them pay for the appeal if they are so certain of its success! Let Protect the Peninsula (PTP) cover and indemnify the rest of us for those costs and whatever liabilities they manage to stick us with. That would make things interesting.
Group Decisions in High Risk Matters Are a Bad Bet
Our being led into this mess demonstrates an astounding lapse of judgment and justifies our concern. Litigation is a different animal. That’s why businesses do everything they can to avoid it at nearly all costs.
At its BEST it is toxic. The Township provoked this suit, obviously while dead wrong about the law and unaware of the illegality of its overreach. Litigation is a highly specialized and nuanced field. It is not for amateurs. It’s for risk takers. It rarely has a lifespan anywhere close to what the litigants seek. It tends to be drawn out and divisive.
It should be hard for any of us to get past the poor judgment previously exercised here, no matter how the faces may have changed on our board.
Group dynamic decision-making itself is a recipe for disaster. Good decisions in high risk ventures are seldom the product of group consensus think. This creates an over dependence on following legal counsel’s lead, a mistake. When largely de-coupled from the harsh economic consequences of its decision-making, as here, (where it is OUR MONEY at stake — exposure for my wife and me approaches six figures here, by my crude math), it nearly assures further disaster, as it has thus far.
Doing so while keeping those who will bear the ultimate economic consequences in the dark as to filings, malpractice insurance expectations, attorneys’ fees award exposures and other very significant concerns, whether for legal or legitimate other reasons (we can’t all be polled as to every concern without creating further chaos, and that is also a legitimate concern), makes the probability of wise decision-making and good outcomes exponentially harder, if not nearly impossible.
Thoughts About the Malpractice Case
There likely is little doubt that former Township attorney Greg Meihn’s representation failed to meet the standard of care here. But, a small firm like his is unlikely to have anything close to an adequate malpractice insurance policy ($5 million? $10 million?), his damage exposure is likely capped because the Township rejected a settlement that was arranged, and pursuing him REQUIRES ANOTHER LAWSUIT.
Inevitably there will be appeals. Expect them to be endless, all the while creating community friction. Sounds like fun, huh? I’ve been told Meihn joined a larger firm. Did responsibility for this exposure follow him into his new firm? Interesting, but also itself a very complicated matter.
Ask our board whether it had the foresight to demand our outside counsel carry a mandatory minimum malpractice insurance policy, and, if so, what limits did we mandate and was it dictated on a “claims made” or “occurrence basis?” If the first answer is “no,” that should suffice as proof that our board doesn’t belong in this high stakes poker game playing with our money.
“Legal Malpractice” is a highly specialized practice. It is difficult to find highly skilled lawyers who will sue other lawyers, and this requires someone with a great degree of acumen. It is not for someone who merely dabbles in the practice. The Township surely has a liability policy in some amount. I might guess up to $25 to $30 million, but access requires showing that our neighbors who made these decisions on our behalf committed negligence or worse. Sound like fun?
The reasons why we don’t know malpractice and liability insurance terms and limits and the insurer’s view of its exposure here is a legitimate one. Insurance coverage is generally not discoverable because it taints litigation.
Would you fly an airplane without a front windshield to see what is ahead? That’s what relying on someone’s malpractice insurance to bail you out of a bad circumstance amounts to. Unfortunately, this decouples this information from our community and our decisionmakers, yet another toxic factor when it comes to reaching the best decision for us all.
Thoughts About the Appeal
Now, let me share thoughts about the appeal. Absent a settlement, appealing is inevitable to maintain the element of risk for the wineries, but offers no real solution. We’ve already lost once. Any appeal IS A LONG SHOT. True, irrespective of what our attorneys tell us.
Any strategy as to the appeal needs to assume that we have an extremely low probability of finding ANY solution there. At best, we might incrementally improve our leverage, but this is a very long shot because the die was cast when we entered this legal fight unarmed. That is the reality.
Settlement Time is “Now”
We are now reduced to: i) leveraging certainty of outcome for the wineries through settlement; ii) hopefully, a mutual desire to move on; and iii) I hope it’s fair to say, a desire for the wineries to “be as neighborly” as they can, over the long run.
Overplaying this last angle is at our peril. It looks like PTP and a significant contingent at the Monday meeting are intending to do exactly that. We forced the wineries into a situation that triggered a lawsuit with devastating consequences and the wineries emerged “the bear.” Let’s not needlessly poke them again. “Taking the kickoff and running out of bounds as quickly as we can” would be a wise strategy given the many misalignments we have working against us here.
In short, after all this time, this is still elevating as a recipe for disaster for our residents. It is the equivalent of providing the means for a 14-year-old boy, a good kid by every measure, to play with a stick of dynamite in the neighbor’s house for the 4th of July.
Don’t give a kid matches, and don’t give a teen a stick of dynamite without awareness of how likely it is for things to go wrong. In this case, the “teenager” might be our own PTP. Let’s not allow this to be hijacked by anyone.
Let’s play smart, OMP.
– Todd J. Anson, OMP Resident
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Wow! This is most excellent and spot on!
Sad all around. What kind of compromise do they expect when they refused any offers for the past several years.
I am not optimistic based on what I saw and heard at the meeting especially from some of the board members.
The hubris was quite amazing. No the wineries are not to be blamed if we don’t have money for a new fire house.
The blame lies with those who did not want to work with the wineries from the start and continued that attitude all the way through.
For those who think this is just about the wineries are misinformed.the rules were made even more anti small farmer when they enacted the amendment called 201. This eliminated the opportunities that were there for farmers with less than 40 acres. It also eliminated opportunities for farmers who had less than 50 acres but 40 or more. Don’t be fooled into thinking this was just making sure that no more wineries would come here which they won’t by the way. It meant that someone for example with 5 or 10 acres could not process products or have them processed elsewhere and sell it.
His it worth 50 million to have taken the position that a winery could not have an event or wedding on their property or had to sell only wine related products and with a logo. One winery was told they couldn’t sell water in bottles unless it had a logo. Is that kind of a restriction worth 50 million to you?
Common sense left the peninsula years ago.
Common sense would have told you don’t scream and holler about something you don’t even know the content.
This is what happened at the St Joe’s meeting when an offer was brought to the township. Many residents were quite vocal opposing acceptance of a compromise. What was it that drove them to this position. The PTP whipping them into a frenzy about unfounded consequences. PTP still is trying to whip that frenzy up. Their ludicrous claim over again that there will be 2 weddings here every weekend day at each winery, that they will stay open till 2 am, blah blah blah. Please let’s use some common sense. Most of the people who supported the idea of an appeal also supported compromising with the wineries.
I hope the town takes a different tack this time around.
The township supervisor Maura Sanders stated she is “still not opposed to anybody (from the wineries) reaching out to me & offering to engage in a settlement discussion”. The township should be running to the wineries & initiating negotiations. This stance is extremely worrisome.
Amen, Martha & “Hoping for a better attitude.” PTP has hijacked the narrative here & it’s been effective for them. It’s time to raise our voices of reason! A township official estimated my wife’s & my tax exposure at over $80K on this mess! I’m guessing that the township has never managed anything this large before, making it the single largest management responsibility in its history. I was stunned last Monday to see that the “win at all costs” PTP crowd continues to behave recklessly with enormous amounts of OUR resources at stake, not their own. It is obviously not the first time as their hand is evident in the unconstitutional measures they included in the ordinance precipitating this liability.
It’s quite shameless, almost cowardly, for neighbors to support PTP anonymously in creating this enormous exposure for their neighbors in our community while pushing their personal, illegal as evidenced by the judgment, agenda. I’ll organize a sign up sheet where those continuing to hardline the wineries & choosing to roll the dice with this judgment can sign up & jointly indemnify the rest of us, who want fiscal responsibility, sanity & solitude. (I DO believe the appeal is necessary; however, it cannot & should not be a main pillar of any resolution. It must be used for leverage).
For the record, I have no interest in the wineries whatsoever. We formerly lived for 20 years on Lake Charlevoix just behind the historic Loeb Estate’s wonderful Castle Farm wedding venue to relocating to OMP. There were multiple weddings each night all year long. Noise was never a problem. It added charm & character, just as supporting our wineries within reason has here. Scandalizing the behavior of young women in cocktail dresses having innocent fun as one writer did is not where we should allow this to go. That kind of shaming is offensive.
The open space we get from any agri-use, particularly vineyard use, is a beautiful compromise between density & commercial use. Choke off the vineyards & we all lose. The Federal Court just gave us a big time wake-up call. PTP is doubling down rather than responding with respect, contrition & a resolve to manage this mess to a mutually acceptable conclusion. They can do so because they aren’t spending THEIR OWN MONEY. It is ours. THAT callous stubbornness gets the township WOMPED again.
Who cares about a few more wine tour vans filled with wedding celebrants during the Summer months? Not me. I enjoy the festive environment & am happy to see people living full lives & having fun. Let’s make sure the wineries have guidelines that allow them to thrive with reasonable, constitutional, rules in place.
Neither the appeal nor the malpractice claim(s) (though I cautiously support the pursuit of both) offer any kind of real solution. That can only come from us, our community, through our resolve to silence the agitators & compromise. I am not prepared to spend a dime, let alone over $50M to settle a law suit that was intentionally provoked by a divisive few manipulating a planning staff & council in over its head managing an exposure this big.
“As of Tuesday, July 15, the Township legal counsel was still working with all current and former insurance companies to see what our actual coverage is. As of this posting, that information is still not confirmed.”
Todd, would you be able to opine on the statement from the Township? How is this possible after years of litigation? The Township I believe for a while said they would/could not share the level of coverage and now they say they don’t even know the level of coverage.
While being careful to not offer legal advice here, it is common that insurance coverages are non-discoverable by opposing parties to avoid prejudicing outcomes. It is not uncommon for an insurer to provide an insured a defense or cover some defense costs while reserving the right to dispute ultimate coverage of the underlying claim. My guess is that coverage has not been established (could be in dispute?), otherwise the Township should know what coverages it has. It’s possible that another lawsuit will be necessary to establish coverage if it is an issue. An entirely separate issue from this is the Township attorney’s malpractice insurance. To claim on it likely requires additional litigation, as well.
Do not believe for one second that any of this is simple or straightforward. Absent settlement, which means further concessions and likely money, this drags on for years longer. That’s how litigation works. It’s an endless quagmire.
I beg to differ with some who are acting as if the sky is falling. The future of the peninsula is not at stake here. Some greater latitude within the restrictions illegally imposed on the wineries in the first place is certainly in play, I would think, but nothing worse activity-wise than what the wineries should have been lawfully entitled to conduct in the first place.
The Township is walking a fine line exploring regulation of dock installations out over the Great Lake super aggressively and, I believe, illegally there, as well. How much of this gross mismanagement are we supposed to take?
I’ve had my fill with the PTP/NIMBY rabble rousers recklessly risking my money by causing the Township to overstep regulatory boundaries over matters for which many of us don’t have a strong concern.
Thanks for the analysis. The dock/hoist installation regulation attempt is hard to fathom as this has been decided long ago. Cue the next lawsuit(s) against the Township.
It’s not a high stakes poker game, it’s the future of our community. By appealing, there is an opportunity to go to mediation and set a new course for the township. I’m hopeful that it will be used to everyone’s advantage, wineries, traditional farmers, permanent residents and summer folks. We all have a lot to lose, the money is one thing, what might in the end be the greater loss, is quality of life and ease of running a business on the peninsula.
I doubt that there was anyone who drove the length of the peninsula yesterday (7/20/25, a busy Saturday) that didn’t think about access or passing lanes. As we transition to becoming a more urban township with experiential and boutique farms that are reliant on bringing customers here instead of production farms where the raw produce is hauled elsewhere to be processed and sold, there should be thought given to infrastructure and service needs. Will it be the residents that bear those costs as well as whatever we all need to cough up to pay the wineries for their lawsuit win? Do we plan for it or wait for seasonal gridlock and accident counts to pave our way to the future?
Some of the more vocal users of this forum seem to want the doors flung open for any uses in the agricultural zone. I’m in the camp that any uses allowed at wineries should also be allowed for other farms of the equivalent size. I do wonder what will happen if we see the demise of the soft fruit “industry”. Talk to any of the real farmers about Spotted Wing Drosophila and Japanese Lantern Fly and they will tell you that growing fruit (grapes included) is bound to become much more difficult. What then?
Let’s not cook the goose that lays the golden eggs.