A county court Tuesday sided with citizens' groups and ordered Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett to repeat a search for public documents related to the Brickyard Road controversy to satisfy a public information request.

The West Montgomery County Citizens' Association, the Civic Association of River Falls and the Brickyard Coalition in March filed a lawsuit claiming that Montgomery County had not adequately responded to a public information request filed Nov. 9, 2011.

We have updated this story in a more recent post. Read the full story here.

The request asked for county documents and correspondence pertaining to the county's handling of the Brickyard Road Middle School site in Potomac. The land had been farmed by Nick Maravell of Nick's Organic Farm for 30 years before the Montgomery County Board of Education decided in March of 2011 not to renew Maravell's lease and instead lease the land to Montgomery County to develop into soccer fields.

The Brickyard Coalition has repeatedly expressed concern with the county's public notification process in the Brickyard issue, and in 2011 the Maryland Open Meetings Law Compliance Board found that county residents were not made sufficiently aware of the proceedings. Maravell filed suit against the BOE in July 2011 claiming that the Open Meetings Act was violated and that the court should therefore reject the county’s claim on the land. Maravell settled with the BOE out of court before the case was to be heard.

The Montgomery County Circuit Court on Tuesday denied the county's motion to dismiss the suit and ordered the Montgomery County executive branch to redo the search for documents. This time the search is to be supervised by both the county and the Brickyard proponents.

"This is a huge victory for the citizens of Montgomery County," said Brickyard Coalition organizer Curt Uhre. "We're hoping the county will now in good faith do what the court has ordered them to do."

We have updated this story in a more recent post. Read the full story here.