JOHNS CREEK, GA — Asserting that store owner John Cornetta provided “materially false information” on his business license application, the City of Johns Creek has denied Cornetta a standard business license to operate the Love Shack location at Jones Bridge and State Bridge roads.According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), in a March 8th letter to Cornetta, City Manager John Kachmar stated that “the application contains materially false information.”
“The city’s business license application form asks ‘Will your business be an adult business establishment,” Kachmar wrote in the letter, according to the AJC. “You responded in the negative. This is materially false.”
The letter continues to state that the Love Shack is not authorized to operate in its Johns Creek location, and contends that a judge has already found that the store is not operating legally.
Johns Creek Mayor Mike Bodker said that Cornetta has three options, according to the AJC; he can stop selling adult materials, he can request that the property be rezoned, or he can move to a location zoned for adult businesses.
Cornetta noted that he has a fourth option; file a lawsuit. Should he choose to go that route, Cornetta is certainly no stranger to the courtroom.
“They’re picking on the wrong gunslinger,” Cornetta said.
One of Cornetta’s attorneys, Cary Wiggins of Atlanta, told the AJC that the City Council’s finding could be a harbinger of another attempt to padlock the store.
“This means they’re either not going to tax us, or try to shut us down,” said Wiggins, according to the AJC. “And I don’t think they’re going to let us operate for free.”
The fight over the Love Shack’s Johns Creek location began last summer, when Cornetta first applied for a business license for the location, in what was then Fulton County.
In July of 2006, Cornetta applied to Fulton County for the permits necessary to open as a non-adult business, claiming that the store sells enough non-adult merchandise to qualify as a regular store as defined under County ordinances.
Although Fulton County refused to grant permission for the store to open, Cornetta opened his new store anyway – on November 29th, just one day before the city of Johns Creek came into existence. In so doing, Cornetta hoped to get Love Shack “grandfathered” by being open before Johns Creek’s city codes became effective.
Fulton County sought to stop Cornetta from opening at all, but Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter declined to grant the County’s request, ruling from the bench that the county’s claim was not an “emergency,” and ought to be settled by the same Federal Court handling the ongoing dispute between Cornetta and the County.
In a phone interview with YNOT Tuesday, Wiggins said that the Love Shack location in question was “definitely not an adult business the way that Fulton County defined it,” but that given the stricter definitions employed by Johns Creek, the store “may or may not be [an adult business] – that’s up for debate.”
“Our position is that [the Johns Creek location] was not defined as an adult business when he opened and it should be ‘grandfathered’ in,” Wiggins said.
In a ruling issued in December 2006, Federal District Court Judge Tom Thrash ordered that Cornetta had to close up shop if was still selling a “substantial” amount of adult material; Thrash declined to define the term “substantial,” however.
Rather than close down the Love Shack, Cornetta set about reducing the amount of adult material in stock to the point that such material represented less than five-percent of the store’s total inventory.
“We believe this is an insignificant amount under anyone’s definition,” another attorney for Love Shack, Alan Begner, wrote in a letter to the Fulton County Attorney’s Office at the time.
In January, however, Judge Thrash ruled that Cornetta was in contempt of court and fined him for continuing to sell a “significant amount” of adult material.
At the same time, Thrash suspended enforcement of the $1,000 per day penalty that extended back to his December 22nd ruling and declined to close the Johns Creek location of Love Shack.
“We’re still open and I’m not in jail,” Cornetta said at the time. “I’ll be selling something and I’ll use the most adult words I can. They’re not getting rid of me.”
Cornetta’s lawsuit against Fulton County for denying him a business license is still in progress. Cornetta asserts that the store met the terms of every County regulation business license, but the County refused the license despite his compliance.
According to the AJC, now that Johns Creek is a legal entity, Fulton County is stepping back and allowing the new city to handle the Love Shack battle.
Wiggins told the AJC that Cornetta simply sought a standard business license from Johns Creek in an attempt to comply with the law.
“That’s just good practice,” Wiggins told the AJC. “When you go to court to claim you’ve been harmed, the judge is going to ask, ‘Well, did you try?’”
According to the AJC, the letter from City Manager Kachmar to Cornetta doesn’t specify the basis on which the city determined that the Love Shack is an adult business. Under its adult business ordinance, Johns Creek uses a variety of criteria for assessing whether a business qualifies as an adult business, including the percentage of inventory that is adult in nature, total sales of adult materials, percentage of sales that are adult material and square footage dedicated to the display of adult materials.
A hearing on the matter has been set for April 2nd.
