Crescent Bar residents face second long winter

CRESCENT BAR – The summer crowds have gone home, and Crescent Bar Island lease holders and permanent residents settle in for a second long winter of uncertainty.

“It makes you weary,” said Margaret Linder, who has moved to Trinidad but still maintains a property on the island.

“I don't think about it too much. I can't do anything about it anyway,” said North Park resident Elaine Duda. “Let the lawyers take care of it.”

Lawyers for the island lease holders and Grant County PUD have been battling since January of 2011. That was when the lease holders filed a lawsuit against the PUD and others in between in an effort to stay on the island past the original lease-ending dates, which occurred this summer.

The latest on the legal front was expected to occur on Aug. 11. Senior U.S. District Judge Justin L. Quackenbush for the eastern district of Washington was supposed to consider competing arguments on whether to stay proceedings in his court until after an appeal by the PUD is heard by the Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco.

The Crescent Bar Lease Committee, which represents all three plaintiff entities, doesn't expect a decision from Quackenbush for days, maybe even weeks. Long deliberations have been his track record.

The PUD asked for the stay at the start of August, at about the same time it filed an appeal of Quackenbush's July 30 decision not to grant binding arbitration to the PUD.

That appeal was filed with the Ninth Circuit. It will be some time before it's decided.

The lease holders have until Dec. 10 to file a response to the appeal. It would be heard some time after that, stretching perhaps beyond next summer.

The Port of Quincy, which is between the PUD and the island residents in the chain of leases involved, filed its own appeal. It had nothing different than the PUD appeal. So one response from the lease holders will cover both appeals, according to plaintiff attorney Dale Foreman.

Meanwhile, the PUD wants all action in Quackenbush's court in Spokane to stop, pending the appeal. Its argument is that the Ninth Circuit's decision could void any interim decisions by Quackenbush.

The lease holders see that motion as a delay tactic and filed a response opposed to the stay. It argued that discovery and all other action should proceed.

“They still haven't given us some of the materials we requested two years ago,” a member of the CBLC said.

The PUD responded to that response by agreeing that discovery could continue but that all “substantive” motions should be put on hold. The CBLC does not agree to that.

According Foreman, of Wenatchee, the plaintiffs have “several” substantive motions before Quackenbush. The most substantive is a partial summary judgment that would keep the lease holders in place through some time in 2023. Quackenbush has cited that year as being significant in previous decisions.

The argument by the lease holder attorneys overall is that the PUD is using the appeal and motion to stay as delays that will cost the lease holders more to cling to their lawsuit. It's a position to which Quackenbush agreed when he ruled against arbitration.

Meanwhile, the lease holders who live permanently on the island have to sit and wait, and spend. And, in the end, they could be told to leave.

Linder, 78, noted she and her husband Bob continue to spend time and money on maintenance of a property that has cost them $150,000 or more over the years and may be worth nothing. And she maintains a property for a friend who is now in a nursing home.

“We're getting tired,” she said. “We could do all this work and still have nothing.”

Bob Duda noted he and Elaine, both in their 70s, will not go to Arizona this winter as they have the last five. They don't want to be out of state if, or when, they are told to move out.

And the cost of litigation has been rising. The Dudas just contributed another $500 toward the cause, and they say the total has reached more than $2,000.

“That's the same for every lease holder,” Elaine said.

Elaine noted that if the final decision goes against the residents, they will lose the investment in their homes. And they will still have to pay for the cost of demolition and removal.

The good news for the Linders and Dudas is that they've won every decision so far during the course of the lawsuit. And Quackenbush has found that the PUD has broken promises to the lease holders.

However, the big decision is a way off. It's anyone's guess when it will come.