By JESSICA BRICKER
The Indiana Court of Appeals has upheld a local ruling to dismiss the lawsuit filed by a Bluffton restaurant against the governor and various health officials.
In the ruling issued May 19, the court affirmed the dismissal by Wells Circuit Court in the suit Yergy’s State Road BBQ filed against the Wells County Health Department and Gov. Eric Holcomb. Specifically, the suit questioned the legality of Holcomb’s ability to issue emergency orders forcing mask-wearing during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Enforcing that order, the local health department shut the restaurant down in August 2020 for noncompliance.
The shut-down was challenged, reviewed and upheld by a local panel before it was filed in court. In October 2021, Judge Kent Kiracofe issued an order granting the state and county’s motion to dismiss the suit. The motion cited the core of the issues at hand were moot because the emergency order for face coverings had ended and the state legislature had since modified the governor’s ability to issue such orders in the future.
Appealing the local court’s decision, Yergy’s took the case to the next step.
“Yergy(’s) argues that the trial court erred by dismissing its complaint as moot,” Judge Rudolph Pyle III wrote in the opinion. “Concluding that the trial court did not err, we affirm the trial court’s order dismissing Yergy’s complaint.”
Pyle cited precedent in Indiana courts “that a case is deemed moot when no effective relief can be rendered to the parties before the court.”
He also referred to case law: “When the concrete controversy at issue has been ended or settled, or somehow disposed of so as to render it unnecessary to decide the question involved, the case will be dismissed.”
Because of these precedents, the Court of Appeals agreed with the trial court’s decision.
“It is undisputed that there is no longer an executive order requiring restaurant employees to wear face coverings,” the opinion said. “Thus, the basis of the issuance of the challenged Health Department Order no longer exists.”
Yergy’s had also argued for the “public interest exception to mootness” because the governor can issue another order on restaurants in the future.
“While the restrictions imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic certainly present extraordinary issues involving the limits of executive power during a health emergency, they are not issues, at least as applied to Yergy, that currently need to be resolved,” Pyle wrote. “The legal framework governing the review an issuance of emergency orders has changed … As a result, we decline to apply the public interest exception to this case or to issue an advisory opinion.”
Judges Margret Robb and Leanna Weissmann concurred with Pyle.
jessica@news-banner.com
