DOVER Efforts to resolve the issue of relocation costs for the owners of the former Dover Dairy Queen are moving forward in Tuscarawas County Common Pleas Court.
DOVER Efforts to resolve the issue of relocation costs for the owners of the former Dover Dairy Queen are moving forward in Tuscarawas County Common Pleas Court.
Attorneys for the Dover City Schools Board of Education and Dover DQ Holdings LLC met in the courtroom of Judge Edward O'Farrell for a status hearing on the case on June 15.
Last year, the school district was successful in its efforts to take the Dairy Queen property on N. Tuscarawas Avenue by eminent domain for construction of a new high school.
However, state law allows an owner of a business to seek compensation for reasonable moving expenses, actual direct losses of tangible personal property as a result of moving or discontinuing a business and actual reasonable expenses in searching for a replacement business.
Attorneys for the two sides have been working on this issue for several months.
In a letter to Steven A. Friedman of Squire, Patton, Boggs, the school district's attorney, and Mary Space, attorney for the Dairy Queen owners, O'Farrell wrote that he understood from the discussion on June 15 that Friedman was finalizing the application forum for relocation costs and would be submitting it to the board of education for consideration at its next meeting.
The board will then have the choice of either granting the application form or rejecting it.
Once the form is approved, it will be up to Space and her client to fill it out, Friedman said.
If the board rejects the application, Space plans on filing a motion seeking a judgment that the two state laws covering relocation costs are unconstitutional and in violation of protections under the United States and Ohio constitutions, according to O'Farrell's letter.
"It was discussed that such a motion would not likely be filed until three or four months from (June 15)," the judge wrote.
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