BEFORE THE ILLINOIS POLLUTION
CONTROL BOARERE CE'v
D
PEORIA DISPOSAL COMPANY,
_ )O
CLERK'S OFFICE
OCT
'
6 2006
Petitioner,
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PCB 06-184
STATE OF ILLINOIS
Pollution Control
V .
)
(Pollution Control
Facility Siting
Board
Appeal)
PEORIA COUNTY BOARD,
)
Respondent.
)
OBJECTION TO PETITIONER'S FIRST SET OF REQUESTS TO ADMIT OR
IN THE ALTNERATIVE
MOTION FOR EXTENSION OF TIME TO RESPOND
NOW COMES,
Respondent, the Peoria County Board, by and through its
attorneys, and for this Objection to Petitioner's First Set of Requests to Admit or in the
Alternative Motion for Extension of Time to Respond, states as follows
:
1 .
On or about September 21, 2006, Petitioner served on counsel for Respondent
a "First Set of Requests to Admit of Petitioner, Peoria Disposal Company Directed to
Respondent, Peoria County Board (hereinafter "Request to Admit")
.
2 .
The Request to Admit is 96 pages long, and consists of almost two
thousand (2,000) individual requests to admit
.
3 .
In order to fully respond to the Request to Admit, Respondent would have
to review thousands of pages of documents which have been produced during the
discovery phase of these proceedings, plus thousands of pages of the Record on Appeal,
not to mention interviewing dozens or more individuals, some of whom are County
Board members and employees, and some of whom are not
.
4 .
In order to fully and accurately respond to the entire Request to Admit it
will take perhaps hundreds of hours or more of attorney time, and cost the Respondent
untold thousands of dollars in attorneys fees .
5 .
The sheer number of requests in itself is burdensome and unreasonable,
and is likely to cause unnecessary delay and/or needless increases in costs of litigation for
the County .
6.
Most, if not all, of the documents which Petitioner requests the County to
authenticate in the Request to Admit could have been just as easily, or more easily,
authenticated by Petitioner during the depositions of the County Board members and/or
Petitioner's depositions of objectors
.
7 .
Requests to Admit numbers 461 through 839 relate primarily, if not
exclusively, to documents apparently authored and/or sent by individuals who are neither
members of the County Board, nor members of the County staff, yet Petitioner asks the
County to state whether the author and/or sender ever sent the documents to Petitioner,
something totally outside of the knowledge of the County, and something only within the
knowledge of Petitioner and/or the senders and authors
.
8 .
The County is in no better situation to answer numbers 461 through 839
than is Petitioner, and the County should not have to bear the burden and cost of
acquiring the information for Petitioner's claims relating to ex parte contacts, and those
requests should be stricken .
9.
Requests to admit numbers 1,598 through 1,976 are simply attempts to
transfer the burden and cost of comparing the documents referenced in the Request to
Admit with documents in the Record on Appeal from Petitioner to the County in an
apparent attempt to increase the County's time and expense to defend this appeal, and
should be stricken .
2
10.
Counsel for Respondent has been working diligently over the past two (2)
weeks on reviewing the Requests to Admit and formulating responses, and has not yet
gotten one tenth of the way through the Request to Admit
.
11 .
It is not fair, reasonable, nor likely to help resolve the issues on appeal to
require or compel the County to respond to the excessive and burdensome Request to
Admit, and the Request to Admit should be stricken in its entirety
.
12.
In the alternative, if the Hearing Officer believes some of the Requests to
Admit are reasonable and must be responded to, the County respectfully states the sheer
magnitude of the task of reviewing thousands of pages of documents and responding to
some 2,000 requests to admit cannot be reasonably accomplished within the 28 days
provided under the rules .
6.
An extension of eight (8) weeks is necessary and appropriate to allow the
County time to fully, accurately and thoroughly respond to the Request to Admit
.
7 .
While a response on or before December 14, 2006, would not be filed
before the required 35 days before the hearing on this matter, under the circumstances
such a deadline is reasonable and necessary
.
WHEREFORE, the Respondent, the Peoria County Board, respectfully requests
the Hearing Officer strike Petitioner's First Set of Requests to Admit or in the altneative,
grant the County an extension until December 14, 2006, to respond to the Request to
Admit.
DATED : October 13, 2006
.
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David A. Brown,
for Peoria County
AFFIDAVIT OF SERVICE
The undersigned, being duly sworn upon oath, states that a copy of the attached
Motion for Extension of Time to Respond to Petitioner's F8irst Set of Requests to Admit
was served upon the following persons by enclosing such documents in separate
envelopes, addressed as follows, and depositing said envelopes in the U .S . Postal Service
mail box at Morton, Illinois on the 12`h day of October, 2006, before 5 :00 p .m., with all
fees thereon fully prepaid and addressed as follows
:
Carol Webb
George Mueller, P .C .
Hearing Officer
Attorney at Law
Illinois Pollution Control Board
628 Columbus Street, Suite 204
1021 North Grand Avenue East
Ottawa, IL 61350
P.O. Box 19274
Springfield, Illinois 62794-9274
Brian J. Meginnes
Elias, Meginnes, Riffle & Seghetti, P .C .
416 Main Street, Suite 1400
Peoria, IL 61602
Dated: October 12, 2006 .
Subscribed and sworn to before me, a Notary Public, in the County and State as
aforesaid, this 13 th day of October, 2006.
Notary Public
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OFFICIAL SEAL
HEATHER A. FEENEY
NOTARY PUBLIC -STATE OF ILLU :C
MY COMMISSION EXPIRES 56-200 ;
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