“Motion to alter or amend”

Oconee County has officially asked the Common Pleas Court to be allowed to make post-ruling motions in the zoning case it recently lost. An attorney in Anderson, James Logan Jr., has asked the court for permission to be allowed to motion “to alter or amend” Judge Lawton McIntosh’s ruling in favor of plaintiffs David and Michelle McMahan, Jean Jennings, Lillie Davis, and the estate of Wallace McMahan. A February 25 decision by McIntosh favored the plaintiffs’ challenge of the county’s agricultural residential zoning classification. The plaintiffs own property for which they want a traditional rural zone, which they believe is less restrictive. And the judge sided with their contention that the application of an agricultural residential district runs counter to a state law, the South Carolina Right to Farm Act. But Oconee County, thru its lawyer Logan, and these are words from Logan’s court filing, “…the original version of the ARD, as created by Ordinance 2010-21, has already been adjudged as NOT in contravention to the S.C. Right to Farm Act….” The county further argues that a second judge, Cordell Maddox, dismissed the previous attack on ARD zoning. It calls McIntosh’s ruling contrary to the “one judge rule.”