Barrington Hills is being sued by a group of residents who want the village to tear up the new horse boarding rules just weeks after they were finally approved.
The suit’s plaintiffs, Barrington Hills residents James Drury, Jack Reich and James O’Donnell have long been engaged in a legal dispute with their neighbor Benjamin LeCompte, who operates Oakwood Farms, a horse boarding operation.
The new lawsuit claims that the horse boarding rules should be thrown out because three trustees — Messer, Karen Selman and Patty Meroni — accepted $15,000 in campaign donations from LeCompte in 2011. The candidates returned the donations but received a warning from the State Board of Elections after it was discovered that LeCompte had not been properly identified as the original source of the funds. LeCompte later made the $15,000 donation to the candidates’ Save 5 Acres slate, not to the individual candidates.
Read the full Daily Herald article here.