A Legal Brawl Pitting the CIA And Air Force Against Green Cove and the Hall Family Gave You Us
Defendants Triumph, Their Legal Fees Reiumbursed
The legal dispute that lead to the creation of Clay News & Views has run its course. The city of Green Cove Springs was recently reimbursed for about $276,000 in legal fees after winning a lawsuit involving Reynolds Industrial Park, according to City Attorney Jim Arnold.
In the beginning, the story behind the lawsuit was both irresistible and ignored.
Irresistible because it pitted Reynolds and it’s a tenant, a shadowy aviation outfit named Pegasus Technologies, against the City of Green Cove Springs and the granddaughter of a sheriff whose racketeering earned him a fortune in land and cash.
Ignored because area news outlets will publish stories about bake sales and drive-by shootings but not complex civil litigation.
I was well retired from covering normal hard news, when former Mayor Ed Gaw goaded me into looking up the lawsuit. Let me get this straight, I said, the CIA and Reynolds are suing Green Cove and Virginia Hall to prevent her from developing an apartment complex at the approach to a runway where spy-aircraft come and go in the night?
Yup, sounds like a story. I was busy writing about boats for Loose Cannon on the Substack platform, but I launched a second Substack called Green Cove Springs just to cover that one story. I warned Gaw that he might live to regret it. He probably does.
Green Cove and Hall won the case on August 23, 2023.
Circuit Court Judge Don Lester ruled that the procedures for approval of the apartments could not violate state airport laws because the Reynolds airport was not really an airport in a legal sense. Nor were the city’s actions improper when it annexed the Hall parcel and rezoned it for apartments. Lester dismissed arguments by lawyers for Reynolds and Pegasus who said the city had violated its own Comprehensive Plan for future development.
So what happened to Green Cove Springs, the online publication? As the trial was winding down, I connected with two other local muckrakers—Susan Armstrong and Josh Allen (not of the NFL) to see whether they would like to team up to cover Clay County news that no one else would touch. Clay News & Views was launched in September 2023 as Green Cove Springs was mothballed.
(Clay News & Views has its own Facebook page, too, which links to stories about the county that appear in a variety of other news outlets.)
In February, the Florida Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Lester’s ruling for the defendants. Then it was just a matter of the losers reimbursing Hall and the city for over a half million in legal fees. Done.
Pegasus vs. Green Cove was the story that launched 200 more…and counting.
Peter,
I hope you contacted Clay Port General Manager, Ted McGowan, about their side of the story. Notwithstanding any feeling I might have regarding the brilliance of the City to advocate for placing the "Tailhook Towers" to obstruct the air traffic from one of the City's largest employers, it is notable to recognize Mr. McGowan's efforts to mitigate the problem by offering to provide additional land immediately adjacent to the Hall Property that would create a safe corridor for air traffic, which is recognized as a safety essential by all knowledgeable pilots. Ed Gaw does not have a pilot's license and seems to me more bent on shutting down Clay Port than anything else.
Regards,
Mike Kelter