It's getting ugly again in Arundel

By By Suzanne Monk / managing editor
Nov. 23, 2003
The racing season at Queen City Speedway is over for the year, but the court action isn't. The race track is now the subject of two lawsuits, not one, in the Lauderdale County Courthouse.
The second of the two complaints was filed Friday in Lauderdale County Circuit Court the last business day before a hearing Monday in Lauderdale County Chancery Court about the first.
The old chancery lawsuit
In Monday's hearing, Chancellor Sarah Springer will consider a contempt motion against race track owner Thomas Riley less than a year after a lawsuit between Riley and about 16 members of the Arundel community was settled.
The Arundel residents said the race track was too loud, that the red dirt it kicked up got all over their houses and silted up their ponds, and that their property values had plunged.
On the other side, Riley said he had broken no laws.
A compromise was reached. Riley agreed not to hold races after 10:30 p.m. with a 30-minute grace period to complete races that had already begun and the Arundel residents agreed to drop their claim for financial damages.
In October, seven months after the settlement, the Arundel plaintiffs filed a contempt action against Riley in chancery court, claiming that Queen City Speedway was not living up to its promises.
The new circuit lawsuit
The origin of the new lawsuit goes back to an old misdemeanor arrest. In August 1999 after the chancery lawsuit was filed, but long before it went to trial deputies arrested Riley after neighbors complained that he was disturbing the peace "by allowing loud vehicles to operate on his property."
A justice court judge dismissed that charge in October of this year because the "270-day rule" deadline, mandating speedy trials in Mississippi courts, had (clearly) lapsed. With a dismissal in hand, Riley filed a lawsuit against his Arundel neighbors Friday in Lauderdale County Circuit Court.
In it, he alleges that: they knowingly made a false disturbance of the peace report against him; they did it to gain an advantage over him in the chancery court case; and he has suffered emotional distress and loss of esteem in the community.
Riley also asserts that, because of his arrest, his business suffered a substantial loss in value which resulted in him being unable to sell it.
And, in that, there is a note of irony: decreased property value was one of the things the Arundel residents complained of in their earlier chancery court lawsuit against Riley.
It's spinning out of control. Bad feelings involving Queen City Speedway have now surfaced in three of Lauderdale County's four courts and the thing is beginning to chase its own tail.
Quick takes
Defamation delay: County Judge Frank Coleman was scheduled to hear motions earlier this week in a $1.9 million defamation lawsuit against Lauderdale County Supervisor Ray Boswell. The hearing didn't happen; it has been rescheduled for early December.
Drug sentence: Several people have asked me why Kirby Glenn Tate received such a long prison sentence. He was convicted in September, after a three-day trial, of two drug counts involving almost 1,000 grams of marijuana.
Tate received two 60-year sentences, to be served concurrently. Why? Because he turned down a plea bargain for less time. Once he was convicted by a jury, he received the mandatory maximum because he was indicted as a habitual offender.
The Mississippi Department of Corrections will transport Tate to Meridian on Wednesday for a hearing, as his lawyers argue that he should be freed on bond pending an appeal.
New DA: Anthony Buckley, the district attorney-elect of Jones County, was in the Lauderdale County Courthouse this week to see how a grand jury works. Before he ran for office, Buckley's practice was mostly about criminal defense not prosecution. Interestingly, before he could be allowed to observe the process, he had to be named a "special prosecutor" for Lauderdale County.