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Judge Expedites Holmes’ Lawsuit Against Tunnel Referendum

News   April 15, 2011 at 4:46 pm Erica C. Barnett

King County Superior Court judge Laura Middaugh issued an order today laying out an expedited timeline for city attorney Pete Holmes’ lawsuit to avert a referendum on the deep-bore tunnel from going to the ballot. The city also filed its motion for summary judgment in the case, arguing that the agreements are not subject to referendum because they are merely administrative, not legislative, and asking the court to rule the referendum invalid as quickly as possible.

Holmes has asked the court to speed up the process as much as possible so that, if the city does not prevail, the referendum can move forward to an August ballot rather than waiting until November. The court has to decide whether the agreements are subject to referendum on or before May 24 for the measure to move forward in August ballot.

Under the timeline, which we reported Wednesday would be announced today, the defendants in the lawsuit—representatives of Protect Seattle Now, the anti-tunnel referendum campaign—must respond to the city’s summary judgment order no later than May 4, and the city must issue its own responses to Protect Seattle Now by the 10th. The court will hear oral arguments in the case on May 13.


  • Scary DBT

    um….you mean *Friday* the 13th……gulp…..

  • Scary DBT

    um….you mean *Friday* the 13th……gulp…..

  • sarah

    Before anyone yells at Holmes for filing for summary judgment, either or both parties in a lawsuit almost always do that — they want the judge to decide on the merits before further work/expense is needed in the case. And notice that Holmes wanted the judge’s opinion fast so that a referendum could be held before November; that should remove some charges people make against him. Whatever you think about the tunnel, you can’t really make him out to be an ogre.

  • sarah

    Before anyone yells at Holmes for filing for summary judgment, either or both parties in a lawsuit almost always do that — they want the judge to decide on the merits before further work/expense is needed in the case. And notice that Holmes wanted the judge’s opinion fast so that a referendum could be held before November; that should remove some charges people make against him. Whatever you think about the tunnel, you can’t really make him out to be an ogre.

  • SeattleDem

    I’m all for the expeditious (sp?) processing. Why wait for resolution when time is the one thing we don’t really have? And I agree with sarah, if it has to be on the ballot, better August than November.

  • Anonymous

    I would like to see your interview with Holmes about the second lawsuit, the one against the initiative to prevent leasing of City land for the DBT.

  • Wilbur

    Build the DBTunnel yesterday Time is money. If Seattle voters were asked if they’d rather have mere basic maintanence (sp?) done on the existing Viaduct & just cross our fingers about an earthquake…and a majority did…therefore No Surface Plan & No new Waterfront Open Space….would the Mayor support the Holy Will of the People? As if.

  • Shrek, Esq.

    he’s not letting people vote. there are many cases that say first you let people vote, then you have the lawsuit. it was well within his discretion to file suit before or after a vote, and his doing so directly violates the central theme of his campaign that he’d represent the people and not officialdom.

    but true, he is not literally an ogre. He’s just backsliding like many politicians do. BTW he’s in court every day asserting that cops and officials are above the law and can’t be brought in front of a jury in nearly every single case against a cop, too.

    Not an ogre. Just another lawyer working for the cops, the officials, officialdom, and not the people. Because if he were representing the people he’d not be defending the cops that are the bad apples — but he does defend them tooth and nail.

  • “Freeways solve congestion!”

    yes, given we have a population of 1.8 million and about a one mile skinny downtown that it crowds through on a freeway, 99, and about 6 avenues every day, we desperately need another 4 lanes after AWV is down to restore the crucial flow capacity ….the 45K trips a day is as much as a ballard bridge worth of mobility…so clearly spending four billion dollars to get these four lanes is going to turn downtown streets from congested to congestion free woo hoo! Because we all know:

    we you have a crowded urban center at the middle of a huge multimillion population — adding more freeways thru downtown clears up congestoin every time!

    This is they the cities with the best mobility have added bypass throughways thru downtown in the last few decades all over the world from nyc (robert moses’ famous freeway thru washington sqaure) the new north south freeway thru vancouver which has ended decades of stagnation and the new red line freeway they’re building in LA to solve congestion there. In fact, LA is a good example of how you can build your way out of congestion, so we should imitate them here.

  • http://spifflines.blogspot.com/ John Bailo

    It will be interesting to see the effect of the new Mercer on traffic to downtown using the current roads and highways.

    Maybe it’s a good idea to delay this very suspect tunnel design for a few more years at least…

  • theskanyyousleptwithlastnight

    Half mile wide. if you’re going to go on a tirade at least get your facts straight.

  • sarah

    Esquire? Holmes doesn’t prosecute cops; the County Prosecuting Attorney does. Back to your law books.

    And he’s not running for office anymore; he’s IN office.

  • civil justice 101

    hello!~ 1. holmes defends cops in civil lawsuits every day. and 2. in fact, holmes’ office prosecutes misdemeanors. In (1) he asserts they are above the law and need not face jury trials in virtually every case. You and me pay for him to argue that cops are above the law in this manner. And in the item (2) he chooses not to prosecute. (Fairness disclaimer man bites dog!: he actually has decided to prosecute some cop kicking someone in a store for some kind of assault misd. Okay, that’s one where there should have been about 20 by now). Even an Ian Birk if not charged with manslaugher why not charged with assault or assault IV? I mean if you have an argument with a spouse and slam a cabinet door within two feet of the spouses faces, causing apprehension, you go to jail on assault IV. But cops? Bam bam bam bam and not a felony charge and not a misdemeanor charge even when the shooting is unjustified?

    How is this defensible? I guarantee you in the civil suit against Birk Holmes will claim he’s immune from facing the jury. Above the law.

  • Wells

    The affect on Mercer is predictably not good. Bored tunnel supporters say Mercer West and the DBT are unrelated. They expect the affect will be terrible and have sent out the word to keep the two projects separate. The EIS must reflect the connection or be considered invalid. Or, the DOTs will find some loophole to go around their responsibility to serve the public instead of business and money’d interests.