Digester company’s suit against Holland still alive

Jan. 16, 2019

By Ed Byrne

The Brillion News

GREEN BAY – The lawsuit filed against the Brown County Town of Holland by the company planning to develop a $60 million manure processing plant is still in the legal pipeline.

B.C. Organics (BCO) filed the suit against the town Board and its Planning Commission after the Town Board voted down the application by BCO for a permit needed to build the plant in the township at the corner of Old 57 Road and Lamers Clancy Road.

Since then, the developer identified an alternate location about two miles to the north in the Town of Wrightstown – which granted BCO the conditional use permit it needed for the project to move forward.

There had been a lot of speculation that the approval of the plant by the Town of Wrightstown would result in BCO dropping the suit against the Town of Holland – but nothing like that has happened, and it was not even brought up last Friday when Brown County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Walsh held a status conference to map out future developments in the case.

The Friday conference was held in Walsh’s courtroom in Green Bay, with the two primary attorneys participating by phone. They are John Edward Thiel of Appleton, representing BCO, and Remzy D. Bitar, the town’s secondary legal counsel, of Municipal Law & Litigation Group, S.C. of Waukesha.

The town’s primary attorney, James Sickel, turned the defense of the lawsuit over to Attorney Bitar.

The two lawyers asked the court to set up a calendar for moving the case forward. The sequence is for the town to have 60 days to file a response to the BCO petition; then BCO would have 45 days to file its first brief in response, outlining arguments for the suit; the town’s response would follow within 45 days. Then BCO would have 30 days to file its reply to the town’s response.

Thiel asked for Judge Walsh to order that schedule into effect, noting that Attorney Bitar agreed that it is a good schedule.

The one thing still up in the air is whether there would be a live hearing in open court with oral arguments.

Please see the complete version of this story in the Jan. 16, 2020 edition of The Brillion News.