A judge has set a trial date of Nov. 13 for a lawsuit that is holding up a highly anticipated development in Montgomery County’s “Science City,” despite the landowner’s objections that he has not had enough time to develop his case.
Timothy Newell said developer Johns Hopkins University waited until the night before Friday’s hearing scheduling the trial to file key documents that outlined its defense of his suit. The filing also contained an additional list of witnesses that Newell’s attorney said he had not had time to assess.
“We wish the judge had given us more time because the delays were not on our end,” Newell said after the hearing.
The case was also held up during the winter, when a previous judge took six weeks to rule on Hopkins’ motion to throw out the suit.
A spokeswoman for Hopkins said the university has met all it deadlines for the case. The latest filing was not a topic of the subsequent hearing, and therefore “those responses had no effect” on the trial schedule.
“The court denied plaintiffs’ effort to drag the case out and indicated that the court wants to move the case along, something that Johns Hopkins believes is in the best interests of all involved in this matter,” said spokeswoman Robin Ferrier.
At Friday’s hearing, Circuit Court Judge Ronald Rubin said he wanted the case to go to trial within a year of its filing in November 2011.
“I need to move it,” he told the attorneys for both sides.
The dispute is over the 108-acre campus between the border of Rockville and Gaithersburg that Hopkins bought from Newell’s aunt, Elizabeth Beall Banks, in 1989. The property, formerly part of a 138-acre tract included in Belward Farm, was sold at a deeply discounted price of $5 million under the condition that it be developed and used only for academic purposes.
Newell and others who knew Banks say the development plan that includes up to 23 mixed-use buildings ranging in height from three to 13 stories was not what the longtime farmer, who died in 2005, had envisioned.
But Hopkins says it hasn’t violated its contract with Banks. About 40 percent of the property is proposed for life sciences use, according to planning documents.
