Diva’s club, city head to court again Dance bar owner claiming Bangor officials violated right to due process

BOSTON – What could be the last chapter in the legal wrangling between Diva’s Inc. and Bangor officials is set to open Friday in the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Diane Cormier, owner of Bangor’s only adult entertainment business, is asking the appeals court to overturn U.S. District Judge George Singal’s dismissal more than three years ago of her federal lawsuit.

Under the current city statutes, the dancers at Diva’s must wear bikinis – or the equivalent thereof – to avoid running afoul of city laws that limit commercial nude dancing to the city’s outskirts and to establishments that don’t serve alcohol. Diva’s does serve alcohol.

Cormier claims that the city violated her right to due process guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.

Among other things, her attorney, Jeffrey Silverstein of Bangor, contends that the Bangor City Council illegally delayed the opening of her State Street business when it denied her a special amusement permit on May 30, 2001. The Board of Appeals reversed that decision on June 20, 2001.

Cormier is seeking damages from the city for the time she was unable to operate, Silverstein said Wednesday. A hearing never has been held on whether she is entitled to damages and what they might be.

The city claims that it did not violate her right to due process and that she is not entitled to damages because state law defines the granting of a local permit as a “quasi-judicial.” That means that Bangor and city officials are immune from liability because “the permitting decision involved a discretionary function,” according to the city’s brief filed in Boston by attorney Mark Franco of Portland.

The legal wrangling over whether and how Cormier could operate has been ruled on several times by judges in state and federal courts.

Singal, a federal judge, declined in December 2001 to rule on the constitutionality of the city’s ordinance, which prohibits nude dancing in the downtown and most other areas of the city. He left that question to the state court.

Eighteen months later, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court affirmed a lower court’s decision that the downtown strip club had violated two provisions of the city’s land use code and concurred that the establishment cannot present nude entertainment.

The appeal of the federal lawsuit languished as Cormier’s former attorney, Charles Williams III of Lewiston, came under investigation by the Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar. He was disbarred last year by the states’ supreme court justices. Subsequently, Cormier hired Silverstein to represent her.