“It is apparent from the record that the BZA based its decision upon something other than the tenets of the Warren County Comprehensive Plan, the provisions of the Ohio Revised Code or their own zoning code,” lawyer Jay Bennett said in his brief filed in anticipation of a February hearing.
Septek’s lawyer, Tom Eagle, declined comment, while planning to file his response in early January.
Brogan was appointed by the Ohio Supreme Court after all the local judges and the magistrate assigned to the case recused themselves from presiding over the case due to potential conflicts of interest that could be viewed as affecting their impartiality.
One of the neighbors appealing the decision is retired Warren County Common Pleas Judge Dan Fedders.
Fedders and his wife, along with their neighbors on Beal and around Septek’s leased location, appealed the conditional decision of the board in May.
Since then the judges and Magistrate Andrew Hasselbach, assigned to the case, have all recused themselves. Judge Donald Oda II turned to the state’s high court to make the appointment.
Brogan headed a three-judge panel reviewing an appeal on behalf of China Arnold, a Dayton woman convicted of murdering her baby daughter by burning her in a microwave oven.
He was among the 2nd District Court judges who heard arguments regarding the retrial of Roger Dean Gillispie, a Fairborn man convicted in the rape and kidnapping of three women.
As a prosecutor in Dayton in the 1960s, Brogan handled cases involving serial shootings by Neal Bradley Long.
On Feb. 13, he and lawyers for Septek and the neighbors are to meet in a hearing room in the Warren County Common Pleas Court in Lebanon to weigh whether Septek should be allowed to continue operating on Beal Road.
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