City Unsuccessfully Sought to Remove BC Task Force From Lawsuit

The City of Boston unsuccessfully sought, in an emergency motion, to remove the Boston College Task Force from the list of defendants of the lawsuit filed earlier this summer by Brighton residents Patrick Galvin and Mark Alford over the city's review and approval of Boston College's institutional master plan.

The city's corporation counsel and outside legal counsel filed a motion on October 19th as an emergency motion seeking to "cure the misjoinder and dismiss as a defendant the improperly named BC Task Force."

The emergency motion was rejected on November 13th with a hand-written notation -- by the judge in the case, I assume, although I cannot read the signature -- on the court documents stating that:

There are no emergencies in this case. And the court will entertain no further emergency motions. Any and all pending motions shall be heard on the hearing date currently scheduled for 12/14/09. The parties may submit any [revised?] pleadings up until 12/11/09.

The original lawsuit named the Boston Zoning Commission, Boston Redevelopment Authority, and Boston College Task Force as defendants. Boston College has filed a motion with the court to enter the case as an additional defendant.

According to that notation, the parties are due in Suffolk Superior Court today for a hearing on the matter. Based on the court documents to date that I have inspected, I expect the hearing to address two substantive issues: whether or not to remove the BC Task Force as a defendant in the case; and whether or not to add Boston College as an additional defendant in the case. And assuming the case goes forward, they will probably also begin to set up a series of substantive hearings on various elements of the lawsuit.