The Montana Supreme Court has upheld a Flathead District Court ruling last November that threw out a lawsuit challenging the planning process for the Lakeside Neighborhood Plan.

A group of 19 Lakeside-area property owners sued Flathead County and the Lakeside Neighborhood Plan Committee in 2009, challenging the planning process and claiming violations of open meeting and record laws. District Judge Stewart Stadler ruled in favor of the county and Lakeside committee in six of seven legal issues in the lawsuit.

On the remaining legal issue of whether the committee destroyed public records and violated the open meeting law, Stadler said the property owners’ amended complaint didn’t request any relief specific to the alleged destruction of public records and noted that voiding the Lakeside plan wasn’t an available remedy. Stadler dismissed the case, thwarting a request for a jury trial by the property owners who sued.

Those neighbors then appealed the decision on the remaining issue to the state Supreme Court, asking it to decide whether the District Court erred when it declined to void the 2010 Lakeside Neighborhood Plan and determined no relief was available on the plaintiffs’ claims.

The plaintiffs further asked the high court whether the District Court erred in determining a public meeting could not be held via a Yahoo email group. One of the claims in the lawsuit was that the Lakeside committee used a members-only Yahoo group website and later destroyed some public records connected to that private website.

The committee spent three years holding meetings and drafting an update of Lakeside’s 1995 neighborhood plan. It wasn’t until complaints about the lack of transparency in the process began to arise that the Flathead County attorney advised the committee it was subject to open meeting laws and must hold public meetings in accessible places with proper notices. All committee meetings held after Oct. 13, 2008, were properly noticed and held at the Lakeside Library, according to court documents.

The updated plan was approved by the county commissioners in 2010 even though the lawsuit brought by neighboring property owners was still pending.

The Supreme Court said that while it did not condone the committee’s early violation of open meeting laws, once the committee learned it was in possible violation, “it immediately took steps to correctly and publicly notice its meetings and provide the public with access to all of its discussions and planning.”

Because the public was able to then participate in the process, the Supreme Court concluded “that vacating the revised neighborhood plan and reinstituting the entire lengthy drafting process is not an appropriate remedy.”

The high court also concurred with the District Court’s determination that a public meeting could not be held via the Yahoo email account. The account didn’t have online chat capability, and the county Information Technology department testified by affidavit that “it is impossible to hold a meeting on the Yahoo Work Group [because it] was not designed for this purpose and could not be used as an alternative to holding an actual meeting.”

While the Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s ruling that the Yahoo account didn’t constitute a meeting, the justices addressed evolving technology.

“We caution public officers that conducting official business via email can potentially expose them to claims of violation of open meeting laws,” the ruling stated.