David Ruttenberg had a good day in court yesterday.

The town of Manassas Park had denied Ruttenberg his conditional use permit (CUP) as part of its continuing harassment of him and his business. The local zoning board actually overruled the town, finding for Ruttenberg on a number of issues too complicated to get into here. The town then bizarrely sued its own zoning board–and Ruttenberg–in district court.

The court yesterday found in favor of Ruttenberg. Had he lost, he would have had to close down his bar for good. Because he won, he’ll get the “privilege” of keeping it open and operating at a loss (he still can’t serve alcohol — that appeal comes later). But it does allow him to keep the place open long enough to solidify a deal with a potential buyer. Of course even that is a Pyhrric victory. Even if everything with the sale goes great, he’ll be getting a fraction of what the business was worth before all of this began.

There’s more good news, though. The judge in the case apparently agreed with Ruttenberg that this is a property rights issue. That’s important because it helps Ruttenberg with his federal case, which he’s now appealing to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. It doesn’t help him with the immunity stuff, but it does help solidify his claim that his civil rights were violated.

People close to the case I’ve talked to also say that the exposure the case has gotten on Black Velvet Bruce Li and the blog you’re reading may have partially influenced the judge’s ruling.

This is great news. But we’re still a long, long way from getting this guy any sort of justice.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2007 at 11:00 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Police Militarization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.