A half dozen landowners who filed a lawsuit that might have halted development of the massive Rivian auto plant near Social Circle do not have to pay some of the legal costs spent by the state to defend the project.

Lawyers hired by Georgia and by a local development authority asked a judge in Morgan County to make the landowners pay for the taxpayer dollars Georgia paid them, arguing that the plaintiffs had brought a frivolous lawsuit.

But the judge ruled against the state, determining that the suit was an earnest attempt to determine whether Georgia officials had the authority to waive local land use rules for a private development project on public land.

The state bypassed the agricultural zoning for the 2,000-acre property by purchasing it, then leasing it to the Joint Development Authority for Morgan and nearby counties, which in turn leased it to electric automaker Rivian.

Nearby landowners sued, asking whether a for-profit corporation that makes automobiles on public land was a “governmental purpose” that would trigger legal immunity.

The court decision means the landowners do not have to pay the state’s legal costs of $338,000 in the Morgan County lawsuit.

“It would have been financially devastating for these people,” one of the landowners’ attorneys, John Christy, said Monday.

The state has filed a similar motion in a related case in Fulton County, where it is seeking to recover another $203,000 in legal costs, Christy said.

The state could push forward with its motion for legal costs in the Fulton County case and it could appeal the Morgan County decision.

A spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Economic Development did not answer questions about the state’s next legal steps, responding instead with a statement about the Rivian project.

Rivian will soon break ground on its plant construction, said the joint statement with the local development authority. This “marks the beginning of a generational project that will bring long-term economic opportunity” to the region and the state, the statement said.

The courts have consistently sided with the state and the local authority, the statement added, “and this ruling doesn’t change the status of the Rivian project.”

Christy thinks the judge issued a “well-reasoned and thoughtful” order that will discourage an appeal by the state and to dismissal of the Fulton County demand for legal costs.

 “I think that any appeal would be frivolous,” he said. “I think the standard on appeal would be very high.”

Morgan County Superior Court Judge Stephen Bradley wrote in an 11-page order filed Friday that the state’s claim about a frivolous lawsuit was undermined by its own actions.

The state voluntarily joined the case as a defendant, hiring a large team of lawyers, the judge wrote. This signaled an expectation for “a much more pitched battle in the case,” he added.

Bradley also noted that a lawyer for the local development authority — a co-defendant in the case — had displayed apparent “misgivings” about whether the state’s sovereign immunity would transfer to the Rivian project.

The authority’s lawyer had explained in court that she was withdrawing applications for a change in local restrictions because it would have required 34 public hearings, the judge wrote, adding that he interpreted this as a tacit admission that the law governing the matter was unclear.

“Neither the first nor the second suit filed by the plaintiffs were based on bad faith or were short of justiciable issue,” Bradley wrote, explaining why he sided against the state in what he said was an unprecedented case. “The issues presented concerning governmental land use regulations and public immunity, specifically focusing on the basis of that immunity — particularly the potential use of sovereign immunity to shield a private, for-profit corporation — raise new and unanswered questions of law.”

Bradley wrote that the way the government has handled the property in this transaction seems “clearly designed to circumvent resistance from local voices opposing the Rivian Project.”

Capitol Beat is a nonprofit news service operated by the Georgia Press Educational Foundation that provides coverage of state government to newspapers throughout Georgia. For more information visit capitol-beat.org.