March 22, 2001 | Read Time: 2 minutes
By DEBRA E. BLUM
A federal appeals court has ruled that the financially troubled Barnes Foundation, in Merion, Pa., must pay the legal expenses for neighboring residents whom the foundation accused of racism in a 1996 civil-rights lawsuit.
In a strongly worded opinion, a 2-to-1 majority of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit overturned a lower court’s decision to deny the residents’ request that the Barnes pay their legal fees, and told the lower court to reconsider whether the Barnes had filed the charges “in bad faith.”
The Barnes Foundation, which runs art-appreciation classes, an art gallery, and an arboretum on its 13-acre property, claimed in its 1996 suit that Lower Merion Township and a group of residents living near the institution had conspired to deprive the Barnes of its constitutional rights because three of the four Barnes trustees were black. The suit said that the township discriminated against the Barnes by monitoring it more closely than neighboring institutions and requiring it to adhere more strictly to zoning rules. It also said that the residents’ complaints about traffic and parking and alleged zoning violations at the Barnes were spurred by racial animus.
A U.S. District Court dismissed the case six months after it was filed, but six of the neighbors named in the suit sought legal fees, claiming that the Barnes never had any basis for its charges. The appeals court agreed that there was no evidence of racism on the part of five of the neighbors, and said that evidence of racial hostility by the sixth neighbor, Robert Marmon, was “thin.”
The decision clears the way for lawyers of the five neighbors to seek at least $125,000 in legal fees.
Kimberly Camp, executive director at the Barnes, declined to comment, as did the institution’s lawyers.
The Barnes has been scrambling in recent years to climb out of a financial hole dug in part by its legal expenses, which were about $4.5-million in the 1990’s (The Chronicle, March 8).
Last summer, the Barnes said that without an infusion of cash it would have to shut down within six months. Since then, it has received three $500,000 grants and started a drive to raise at least $15-million over five years.
