Big day nears in James Island battle

The legal fight over the town of James Island's right to exist heads to the South Carolina Supreme Court next month.

The town was incorporated, for the third time, in the summer of 2006, and the city of Charleston quickly filed a lawsuit aiming to have the incorporation declared unconstitutional.

Two prior town incorporations were struck down by the courts in 1996 and 2005.

In the latest case, Circuit Judge J. Cordell Maddox Jr. rejected Charleston's attempt to have the town's formation ruled unconstitutional in 2008, and he reaffirmed that decision in 2009. The city appealed to the state Supreme Court, and oral arguments have been scheduled in Columbia on Feb. 2.

Maddox's ruling was the first time James Island won a court decision related to any of the incorporation attempts. His ruling also clarified that Fort Sumter and Morris Island are not part of the town.

Trent Kernodle, the attorney handling the case for James Island, also argued the incorporation before the S.C. Supreme Court. He said he's pleased to be going into this one having won at the lower court level.

"They just don't tend to overturn their fellow judges on appeal," Kernodle said. "I would much rather go up as a winner, than as the person appealing."

Attorneys Frances Cantwell and Tim Domin will handle the case for the city of Charleston.

Cantwell said there continue to be several key issues in the case, the top one being whether state legislation that was drafted to help the town re-incorporate was constitutional.

On James Island, the town and the city of Charleston each has a patchwork of boundary lines that leapfrog one another, and homes on the same street can be in different municipalities. Towns must be formed from contiguous properties, but the state law allowed James Island and other potential municipalities to ignore certain public lands that would have broken the connection between land to be included in a town.

Cantwell said that on the morning of Feb. 2, each side will get about 10 minutes to address the court and answer questions from the five justices and some time for rebuttal.

"There will not be a decision rendered that day," she said. "We could get a decision in several months."

Meanwhile, the latest town of James Island could celebrate its five-year anniversary this summer. If the town's incorporation were ruled invalid, then what is now the town would revert to being part of unincorporated Charleston County, and the city of Charleston could then resume annexing properties into the city.

Reach David Slade at 937-5552.