A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by Slate Ridge owner Daniel Banyai against the town of Pawlet and a state environmental court judge who ruled against him.
Pawlet officials first took Banyai to court in 2019 for zoning violations. They argued that he had constructed an unpermitted schoolhouse, gun ranges and other structures that he used to operate Slate Ridge, a paramilitary training facility.
In March 2021, Environmental Court Judge Thomas Durkin ruled in the town’s favor, ordering Banyai to deconstruct the unpermitted structures on his property. Banyai appealed the decision, and in January 2022 the Vermont Supreme Court agreed with the environmental court, making Durkin’s order final.
Then, Durkin issued a decision saying that Banyai was in contempt of court, having not met the requirements of his March 2021 court order. He issued a new timeline for Banyai to dismantle the unpermitted buildings on his property, along with daily fines that could be cured if he complied.
In May, days after a court-issued deadline that required Banyai to remove several buildings from his property, Banyai filed a new lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont. On Monday, Judge William Sessions dismissed the suit.
Banyai’s lawsuit accused town officials and Durkin of attempting “to infringe on protected constitutional and state law activity by way of local zoning regulations.”
Robert Kaplan, Banyai’s attorney, argued that media and public pressure had swayed Banyai’s outcome, and that town officials in Pawlet did not treat Banyai equally to other residents of the town. Kaplan wrote in his complaint that the town and the judge acted with “deliberate indifference, malice, and bad faith against Plaintiff in violation of his constitutional rights” when they required him to remove agricultural structures from his property and did not let him repurpose a building he used for paramilitary training.
Sessions, however, wrote that he did not see Kaplan’s argument as new, but rather as rehashing litigation that had already played out in the state court system.
“Instead of complying with the Environmental Court’s several orders, Plaintiff has turned to the federal court for relief,” Sessions wrote in his decision.
On behalf of Banyai, Kaplan had asked the court for temporary restraining orders against Durkin and Pawlet officials and injunctions that would have rendered Durkin’s court decision moot. The federal court denied that request in early June, and then Durkin and town officials in Pawlet asked the court to dismiss the complaint entirely.
In order for Banyai’s case to survive after Durkin and Pawlet officials had filed their motions to dismiss it, it would have needed to contain sufficient facts to support a claim that is “plausible on its face,” Sessions wrote in his decision on Monday.
In addition, Durkin’s position as a judge gives him some legal immunity, Sessions wrote. Judges are not liable to civil actions for their judicial decisions, he said.
“Plaintiff’s complaint includes no plausible claim against Judge Durkin that survives judicial immunity as each claim relates to matters within the jurisdiction of the Environmental Division of the Vermont Superior Court,” Sessions wrote.
Kaplan asked that the court give Banyai more time so that he could change his motion, but Sessions rejected that request.
“We are reviewing the Federal District Court Opinion and Order in consideration of options to move forward to obtain justice for Mr. Banyai for the discriminatory treatment he has endured from the Town of Pawlet,” Kaplan wrote in an email to VTDigger when asked whether he planned to appeal the decision.
