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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA northern Indiana man’s counterclaims against the town of Hebron, which ordered him to remove a pond built on his property, were largely reinstated Thursday by the Indiana Court of Appeals.
The appellate panel reinstated five of seven claims property owner Jon R. Grdinich brought against the town of Hebron, where he built a pond on his land that the town later ordered him to remove. Grdinich in a counterclaim sought a declaratory judgment that the pond complied with town zoning rules, but the Porter Superior Court dismissed that claim for failure to exhaust administrative remedies.
The COA ruled this was improper, as was dismissal of several other of Grdinich’s claims. “Because the resolution of Count 1 potentially impacts all the counts related to the pond, i.e., Counts 2-4 and 7, we conclude that the failure to exhaust administrative remedies is an improper basis on which to dismiss those counts,” Judge Terry Crone wrote for the panel.
“As to Count 5, the inverse condemnation claim, there is nothing in the record to suggest that administrative remedies are available, and Appellees make no argument that there are,” Crone wrote. However, the court found that count was a pleading for which relief cannot be granted, and thus found it was properly dismissed.
Therefore, the COA reversed dismissal of five counts in Grdinich’s counterclaim and remanded for proceedings on those claims. The case is Jon R. Grdinich and JRG, LLC, an Indiana Limited Liability Corporation v. Plan Commission for the Town of Hebron, Indiana, and Town of Hebron, Indiana, and Town Council for the Town of Hebron, Indiana, 18A-PL-1050.
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