High Court to rehear street ruling

Carson City will get a second chance to make its case that it doesn't have to pay back property owners who paid for street abandonments.

A three-member panel of the Nevada Supreme Court will rehear Carson City v. Capital City Entertainment and Millard Realty, according to an order issued on Thursday.

Justices decided Sept. 20, 2001, that the city could not charge for street abandonments within the capital's original 320-acre town site bordered by Minnesota Street on the west, Roop Street to the east, Fleischmann to the north and what would be Eleventh Street to the south.

In 1999 Carson supervisors asked for a judicial review of the city's abandonment process after Carson Station and Pi-on Plaza president Clark Russell threatened to file a lawsuit against the city. Russell paid $125,000 in 1989 for a portion of Ninth Street. When the city did not require Dwight Millard and Hank Thomas of Millard Realty and Construction Co., to pay for the abandonment of a portion of Plaza Street, Russell raised the issue of fairness.

Former Carson City District Judge Michael Fondi ruled in 1999 the city can't charge for abandonments within the borders of the Carson City townsite patented in 1866 by District Judge Samuel Wright.

City attorneys argued the city's land came from the federal government. Therefore, the city owns the streets and can charge for street abandonments.

Russell, president of Capital City Entertainment, estimated the city owes him between $300,000 and $400,000.