ASBURY PARK -- Superior Court Judge Lawrence M. Lawson has dismissed the claims of about two dozen oceanfront property owners who, for various reasons, had sought to overturn the city's water front redevelopment plan.

Lawson upheld the validity of the waterfront plan, dismissing suits that challenged the right of the city to designate a redevelopment area and challenging what properties it included. The judge, in a ruling dated Dec. 3, said state law doesn't require that property owners retain a right to redevelop their own properties consistent with the city's plan.

"In fact the property owners repeatedly failed to redevelop their properties to accord with the redevelopment plan," the judge wrote. "Faced with such inactivity, the city can hardly be faulted for eliminating individual rights to redevelop property."

In a separate decision, the judge rejected another argument from the property owners that the plan should be voided because because a well-known Florida planner, Andres Duany, called in to help finalize the redevelopment plan, was not a licensed planner in New Jersey.

Lawson blasted the property owners on the Duany matter, saying they had tried to have it both ways, using Duany to help their case because he himself had recommended the individual owners have a right to develop their properties, but then saying the plan should be tossed because he was not licensed in New Jersey.

"This court takes umbrage with the fact that the plaintiffs use Duany's testimony to support their position in one motion but attempt to disqualify him as an expert in a later motion," the judge said. "It appears that plaintiffs' present objection to Duany's testimony is a 'last-ditch effort' to cover all the bases, and this court is not willing to submit to such tactics. Plaintiffs cannot bend the law to support their ever-changing positions."

Lawson said an action on Duany's licensing had to be brought by the state Attorney General's office, and if a court decided to take punitive measures, the punishment had to be monetary sanctions, not voiding a plan created to benefit the public. .

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