The City of Duluth responded in Gwinnett Superior Court on Monday to the first of two lawsuits filed against it by Jack Bandy, the landowner who wants to sell his land to Wal-Mart.

In the response, City Attorney Lee Thompson denied that the city violated the Open Meetings Act when it declared a six-month moratorium on large-scale buildings without publicizing it first on a public agenda.

While acknowledging there was no specific agenda item for the July 30, 2007 council meeting regarding a moratorium, the response says that Councilman Doug Mundrick’s introduction of the idea came under the agenda heading “Matters from Council / Department Heads / City Attorney,” which was listed.

The response also denies Bandy’s contention that in meetings with Wal-Mart and city representatives, he was “assured there was no legal problem in constructing the retail store of Wal-Mart on the Property.”

Representatives of the city did meet with Bandy, the response says, and did tell him a retail store was “a permitted use in the current zoning classification” – but nothing more.

Thompson also requests that the mayor and council’s names be removed from the complaint, which is already against the City of Duluth. That gets down to legal issues, said Thompson, and liability.

“I don’t believe there’s any difference between suing the mayor and council and the city,” Thompson said. “You’ll get the same result. The response is to naming them in their individual capacities.”

Anything they did, he added, was as elected officials, not as private citizens.

“There’s no way anyone could pass an ordinance,” he said, “except as a mayor and council.”