DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Tangela M. Barrie said Feb. 1 she will rule at 8:30 a.m. Monday on the legal action to stop the multi-use trail in Brook Run park.
Judge Barrie will make her ruling in courtroom 5-C of the DeKalb County Courthouse. Her comments came at the close of a two-day hearing that city spokesman Bob Mullen called the first significant legal action against the city since it was formed in 2008.
Friday’s testimony centered on disputed hydrology reports.
Richard Edinger, city engineer for Dunwoody, Brookhaven and several other metro cities, testified that the city’s baseline for its hydrology studies was when Brook Run became a park. At that time, a former hospital building stood on the grounds.
Edinger testified that measured stream flows against that baseline — instead of after the building and parking lot were removed – meant the proposed trail did not significantly alter the flows in the hydrology study.
But Barrie later told City Attorney Cecil McClendon she had no understanding of why the city would use that baseline.
And Brian Wellington of NewFields, who testified for plaintiffs, returned to the stand and said that baseline was improper because it gave an improper reading on stream flows.
The hospital and parking lot were roughly the size of the Lakeview Oaks subdivision, where the 25 plaintiffs in the case live, Wellington said.
“I felt like our attorneys made our case,” Adelina Alberghini, one of the plaintiffs, said as she left the courthouse.