Spokane taking adult stores back to court

The city of Spokane is headed back to court in its ongoing battle with a chain of sex shops it has been fighting for years.

The City Council approved the move Monday night after its special counsel, Milt Rowland, said a settlement in the city’s 2005 lawsuit with World Wide Video has proven unenforceable. The council gave Rowland the green light to return to U.S. District Court to ask for the settlement to be thrown out and move toward a trial.

Council members also approved a resolution directing city staff to start enforcing a resolution that Rowland said could shut down the company’s North Division store, Hollywood Erotique Boutique, because it doesn’t comply with zoning laws.

Gilbert Levy, a Seattle attorney who represents World Wide Video, said Tuesday he was unaware of the council’s decision but added that it would be up to the judge, not the council, to cancel the settlement, which is known as a consent decree.

“A consent decree is kind of like a contract,” Levy said. “One guy can’t break a contract because he doesn’t like the terms.”

The city sued World Wide Video in 2005 as it tried to enforce an ordinance that defines an adult-oriented business which could be restricted to a defined area of the city – if selling adult-oriented merchandise like sexually explicit videos and sex toys was “clearly material to the viability of the business.” Before that case went to trial, the city and World Wide Video reached the consent decree, signed by U.S. District Judge Robert Whaley, that allowed for the lawsuit to be dismissed if the stores started operating like a “reasonable boutique,” devoted to a range of merchandise.

But neighbors around the North Division store continued to complain about customers of Hollywood Erotique Boutique. Stephanie Galtieri, who lives across the alley from the store, said she finds sexually explicit trash in the streets and alleys, as well as used condoms, empty bottles and syringes in her yard. Her children aren’t allowed outside in their yard after dark, she said.

“I’m just tired of being scared,” said Pam Reef, who lives near Galtieri on North Atlantic.

Earlier this year the city hired Carl Bozman, a Gonzaga University professor of marketing, to study the stores and determine whether they were acting as “reasonable boutiques.” His conclusion, according to court records, was that they were not, and instead engaging in “irrational behavior” by bringing in merchandise that was not adult-oriented that had little chance of selling, and leaving it on the shelves.

The city asked Whaley to find World Wide Video in contempt of court for violating the consent decree.

But Whaley said that Bozman’s conclusions weren’t enough for him to conclude World Wide Video wasn’t living up to the consent decree. Micromanaging what a store should or shouldn’t do, given what the judge called “the vagaries of coming and going fads,” are beyond the court’s authority.

That condition in the consent decree is “hopelessly vague,” Whaley said.

Councilwoman Nancy McLaughlin said she found it ironic that the judge who signed the consent decree would later rule it to be too vague to enforce, but Rowland explained the city and World Wide Video drafted the language.

The council put the issue on its Monday agenda with short notice because Rowland wants to file papers to have the consent decree set aside by the end of the year. The council, which isn’t scheduled to meet again until Jan. 2, suspended its normal rules for advance notice to hold the hearing. Levy said he didn’t know about the votes until he was contacted for a comment by The Spokesman-Review, and couldn’t address the complaints of neighbors because he hadn’t heard them.

Previous complaints were generated by a “pretty active, pro-censorship group,” he contended.

“I guess we’re headed for another round of perpetual litigation,” Levy said.