An Incentive to Sue North Richland Hills
By Ron West
In this capacity, Mr. Staples is required
to attend all Council Meetings, advise the Council on legal matters and assist
in writing new ordinances. This is
relatively standard for any city attorney.
What is not standard is that Mr.
Staples also is paid to defend all lawsuits against the City. The bigger and longer the lawsuit, the more
money he makes. While I do not doubt
that he has good intentions, the facts suggest that they may be overridden by
the need to bill the city huge bills for defending the city in court.
The suit of most concern is the
Wrongful Death Lawsuit filed by Barbara Davis regarding the death of her
teenage son as a result of a no knock warrant.
That warrant has now been declared deliberately false and thrown out by
an appellate court. In other words, the
city had no cause for the warrant and facts were deliberately falsified by a
city police officer in order to secure the warrant. Other facts in public records indicate that
Mr. Staples for some reason illegally withheld much of the information that had
been subpoenaed by the plaintiffs. This
withholding of records allowed the plaintiff to go back to court for a further
summary judgment ruling that went against the City. Add to this, documented evidence that the
police officers involved, corrupted the “crime scene” and the officer in charge
had a five minute conversation with the Chief of Police within minutes of the
killing of Troy Davis but neither he nor the Chief can recall even talking to
each other or what they talked about.
Troy Davis was dead 1.8 seconds
after the NRH Swat Team knocked down his door without knocking. Try counting less than two seconds while
trying to do an action. Troy Davis had
no chance to do anything but die.
At the present time, the Davis Suit
is seeking $4 to $5 Million in Damages plus the removal of the NRH Chief of
Police and a Senior Police Officer that was the one that falsified the request
for the warrant and was in charge of the crime scene when it was
corrupted. He is still on the police
force and has reportedly amassed significant real estate holdings in NRH since
the
One cannot underestimate Mr. Staples
however. Two high level city employees
were deposed under oath and later, after conversations with Mr. Staples,
completely recanted their testimony.
This looks really bad in public records since both the original
depositions and the “revised versions” are in the files.
Credible sources suggest that if
this case goes to a Jury Trial in a Federal Court, the City should expect to
pay damages in the Millions of Dollars – maybe $25 to $50 Million. Guess who gets to pay that if it were to
occur? The same sources also suggest
that Ms. Davis would settle this suit were the City to remove the offending
Police Officers and pay something for their actions.
Now comes the tough part. Guess who wins regardless of the
outcome. If you guessed Mr. Staples, you
are quite correct. Mr. Staples has been
paid nearly $700,000 in the last two years defending this suit and is still
encouraging the city to fight on. This
is further proven by the proposed new budget for the City for 2004/2005 that is
available on the City’s website. The new
budget calls for $500,000 budgeted for legal fees and contains comments that
this is somewhat of a guess and legal fees may be even more. The bottom line is that Mr. Staples wins
regardless of whether he is doing the right thing for the city or not.
Fortunately, this is an easily
correctable situation. The City Council
– if encouraged by the citizens – can change the arrangement with Mr. Staples
and utilize his services as the City Attorney.
They can decide that defense of lawsuits against the city should be by
outside attorneys with specific experience in the field of the suit. The attorneys defending the suits should have
no financial ties to Mr. Staples or his firm.
By this simple action, Mr. Staples could then advise the city on the
pursuit of suits based on the needs of the city rather than on his need for
billing.
This is a time critical situation
because the Davis Case is moving ever nearer to a Jury Trial. This is just not a winnable suit by the city
and there are substantial public records that are very, very incriminating for
our Police Department. The sad thing is
that this situation – while tragic – could have been easily handled if the
police involved had immediately admitted the errors. Unfortunately, some of the high level players
apparently thought that they could destroy Ms. Davis and her son without consequences.
If we, as citizens, do not let the
Council know that we are concerned about the conflict of interest described in
this column, then hang on to your wallet.
Mr. Staples will collect probably $1 Million or more in additional legal
fees just on this case and the City taxpayers will in all probability have to
anti up Millions of Dollars in damages in addition to paying him for his
services.
It is time to remedy this terrible
situation and properly protect our city.
It is not an attack on Mr. Staples, rather, it is just good business for
our city!