When

performing legal work for a municipality, whether it be

an in-house attorney or a private firm working under a

contract, the ever-lingering threat of citizens and

companies that may want to take you to court over a

ruling or other controversial municipal decision comes

with the territory.

But while

some tracts of land in Peachtree City have a long and

rich history of litigation, and the City Council has

addressed several potentially explosive issues in the

past few years, the actual court docket is rather light

right now where the city is concerned.

There are

currently five lawsuits pending against the city,

according to city attorney Rick Lindsey of Webb, Stuckey

and Lindsey. All of them concern development-related

issues.

The most

recent action to make headlines was Pathway Communities'

decision to file suit over the city's recently adopted

traffic impact ordinance. During council debates late

last year, Pathway representatives repeatedly asserted

that the move was unconstitutional.

The suit

was filed the morning after a vote on the ordinance was

taken at a regular Thursday night council meeting.

The city

has filed its response as required by law, Lindsey said,

but the plaintiffs are not pursuing the case with an

extraordinary amount of vigor.

Lindsey

said that George Rosenzweig, Pathway's attorney in the

case, told him recently the suit was filed mainly because

a challenge to an ordinance of this type must be filed

within a certain time frame. Rosenzweig also reported

that Pathway hopes to resolve the conflict outside the

courtroom by working with city staff, Lindsey said.

The same

situation essentially exists with Pathway's suit over the

city's buffer ordinance, filed a couple of years ago.

There has been virtually no action since the action was

filed, Lindsey said.

The Black

family, who owns property on the southern end of the city

on Ga. Highway 74, also filed a lawsuit over the buffer

ordinance at about the same time. They are also involved

in some of oldest ongoing legal actions in Fayette

County, according to Lindsey.

Two other

Black property suits involve rezonings, and both of them

were filed in the late 1980s. Some extensive discovery

took place about 12 years ago, Lindsey said, but the

cases have lain dormant most of the time since.

"They

may heat up one day," said Lindsey. "They may

never heat up."

He added

that the up side to these suits being dormant is the fact

that no expensive legal time is being spent on them, thus

saving the city money until they can be resolved.