The N.C. Court of Appeals has denied again Pinewild residents' appeal of their annexation by Pinehurst.

Annexation opponents had asked the appeals court to rehear its case. A three-judge panel of the appeals court had unanimously denied Pinewild's claims.

They will now ask the state Supreme Court to review the case, according to John and Lydia Boesch, who formed a group called StTOP, Stop the Taking of Pinewild. An appeal to the Supreme Court is not automatic because of the unanimous ruling by the appeals court.

Attorney Robert E. Hornik represented the Pinewild Project. Michael Newman, Anthony Fox, and Benjamin Sullivan represented the village of Pinehurst.

Pinewild filed a petition Aug. 24 asking the appeals court to rehear the case. The court denied the petition Wednesday, according to an order entered by John H. Connell as clerk of the N.C. Court of Appeals. Connell certified the order to the Clerk of the Superior Court, Moore County.

"We believe in the rule of law," Lydia Boesch said in a telephone interview Thursday morning." We believed the Court of Appeals overlooked something significant, so we asked for a rehearing. We were told by an attorney in Raleigh -- a prominent attorney in Raleigh -- that not even Oliver Wendell Holmes could have gotten a rehearing."

They are not giving up. Their next step will be to ask the N.C. Supreme Court for a "discretionary review" of the appeals court's original denial.

She said she will also seek sanctions against Pinehurst Village Attorney Michael Newman for a column he wrote for The Pilot Aug. 16 that she says misstates the facts in a parallel federal case they filed arguing that the annexation amounts to a taking.

"Of course we are going to ask for that review," she said. "Does it matter that Mike Newman is not telling the truth? I am going to report this to the Bar. This is so serious: that he would misrepresent a federal court decision. I will lay out the facts, show them the column, show them that Mike misrepresented a federal court decision in a column for the newspaper."

Newman said Thursday that he stands by his column

"There is nothing inaccurate in my column," he said. "I have the entire Barefoot vs. city of Wilmington annexation file, which I requested long ago from the city of Wilmington. The annexation file included the annexation services report, which on page 55, identifies every subdivision subject to this annexation. The subdivision list includes many private gated communities. They argued that because they lived in private gated communities and paid property owners' association dues, that the annexation constituted a Fifth Amendment taking.

"Where Lydia Boesch has gone astray is that she simply read the Barefoot 4th Circuit Court of Appeals opinion, without reading the briefs leading to the opinion in which these very arguments were specifically rejected. If Lydia Boesch wants copies of these materials, I will be happy to provide them to her. It is right there in black and white. You can read it."

As for any attempts to seek sanctions against him through the state bar, Newman said: "They are free to file whatever frivolous motions they want and I will respond to them."

In the meantime, the Pinewild group will press on with another petition to dismiss an earlier ruling against them in Moore County Superior Court.

"We are going to do again what we were going to do from the very start," Lydia Boesch said. "There are so many unresolved questions. I got up this morning to work on our motion to dismiss."

Contact John Chappell at 783-5841 or by e-mail at jchappell@thepilot.com.