NEW ORLEANS — A Louisiana appeal court overturned a lower court ruling and dismissed a lawsuit by the New Orleans City Council against Mayor LaToya Cantrell, saying the legislative body essentially didn’t have standing to bring the case.
The City Council sued Cantrell to undo an agreement the mayor made in 2020 with the heirs of Edward Wisner to privatize a huge land trust Wisner left for the city of New Orleans 109 years ago, so they could continue to share the lucrative proceeds among themselves and the city’s mayors could continue to dole out their share of the money to special programs and projects without City Council oversight.
"We are pleased with the 4th Circuit Court of Appeal's dismissal of the New Orleans City Council lawsuit,” mayoral spokesman Gregory Joseph said.
But City Councilman Joe Giarrusso said the council disagrees with the latest ruling and will likely take the case to the Louisiana Supreme Court.
Giarrusso says the Louisiana Fourth Circuit’s ruling does nothing to help resolve the Wisner Trust and that the trust assets belong to the city of New Orleans.
“In 2014, the Wisner Trust expired. Those significant trust assets, including Port Fourchon, belong to the City of New Orleans and no one else,” Giarrusso said in a statement released on Monday."
“On Friday, the Fourth Circuit, for the second time, agreed that the trust expired nearly ten years ago. The appellate court’s ruling that the Council lacks the capacity to enforce the trust’s expiration is hyper-technical and does nothing but delay these proceedings. This can and will be easily fixed if necessary. Someone must be able to sue to protect what properly belongs to the City. The residents of New Orleans deserve no less than that.”
The appeal court overturned a ruling by Judge Kern Reese, which declared the Wisner Trust proceeds “public funds” and blocked the mayor and Wisner’s heirs from spending them without the City Council’s approval.
That threatened to shut down dozens of social programs and projects that mayors have supported for decades using about 35% of the Wisner Trust funds.
In recent months, Cantrell and the council have agreed on allocations of some of the money as the lawsuit progressed through the courts.
The rest of the annual proceeds was shared by about 50 Wisner heirs, Tulane University, LSU Health Sciences Center and the Salvation Army.
Wisner’s heirs have been fighting to maintain control of the money after the trust was supposed to have dissolved in 2014.
But the mayor at that time, Mitch Landrieu, never made moves to claim the land, and neither did Cantrell.
In 2020, Cantrell struck a new agreement with the heirs to privatize the trust so it could continue to be shared as it had been, in perpetuity.
The City Council argues 100% of the property, which includes a major oil and gas port at Port Fourchon and generates around $10 million a year in lease payments, should have automatically gone to the city in 2014.
Any money the land generated would have gone to the city’s general fund, would have been reported publicly, and would have been budgeted with City Council oversight.
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