Mendocino County Superior Court Judge Jeanine Nadel has ruled that MCTV must give back the Fort Bragg Footlighters building and pay the theater company $36,315.
The two nonprofits have been battling in court since 2009 over a decision made in 2006 to give the big white building at 248 E. Laurel St. away. Footlighters formed in 1957 and had used that building since 1967.
In court findings filed May 1, Nadel wrote that then-Footlighters board president Bud Farley acted illegally in transferring the building to the local public access TV station in 2007. Farley believed Footlighters was about to dissolve.
“248 E. Laurel St. belongs to the Fort Bragg Footlighters and it always will. It is OUR home,” wrote Junice Gleason, current Footlighters board president.
“Footlighters has endured a lot in the last six years. We went from having our own “Little Theater” as our home to being kicked out on the streets. We are just so happy that it came out in court. You can”t dispute the facts. Finally we have justice,” Gleason said.
Mendocino Coast Television Executive Director Elizabeth Swenson was scrambling to get a special board meeting together and react to the judgment, which MCTV found out about from this newspaper on Monday, May 6.
” I am shocked but mostly deeply saddened at what this will mean for MCTV and the coastal community, the county even,” Swenson said. “For the last many months, I have been telling myself one never knows what is going to happen when you go to trial, but I strongly felt we would prevail.”
Nadel rejected the main defense that MCTV had acted in good faith and that nobody had objected in a timely fashion. Footlighters didn”t object to the building giveaway back in 2006, when it was headline news. Objections came up in 2007. A legal demand letter was written in August 2008 asking for the building back. Suit was filed in 2009.
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