Attorneys in Darr v. Columbus exchange letters

During the recent meeting between Sheriff John Darr and Columbus Council to discuss budget overruns in the sheriff’s office, Councilor Skip Henderson said it was good to see everyone “pull on the same end of the rope.”

Henderson, who is also the Budget Review Committee chairman, wrote Darr a letter a few days later, thanking him for coming to council and reviewing some of the things they all agreed to.

One of Darr’s attorneys, Kerry Howell, responded to Henderson’s letter with a letter to Paul Ivey, one of the city’s attorneys in Darr’s lawsuit against the city. The letter addressed Henderson’s letter, but also addressed the possibility of using mediation in the lawsuit.

“As we have long stated, there are issues where common ground can and should be found,” Howell wrote, “especially if all concerned were, as Mr. Henderson described, to actually ‘pull on the same end of the rope.’”

It also addressed a recent request by the city’s lawyers for Darr’s attorneys to drop Mayor Teresa Tomlinson and the other city executives from the lawsuit, since a recent ruling dismissed all the charges that pertained to them. The only issue still to be settled pertains to the amount of the budget, not the process, which would involve the executive defendants.

Howell said he hadn’t talked with the other attorneys about dropping the executives from the suit.

“However,” Howell wrote, “putting everything else aside, a major problem with the request is the effects a dismissal of the executive defendants will have on the sheriff’s ability to appeal the court’s prior orders once there is a final judgment.”

Ivey responded to Howell about a week later, saying they were “disappointed” that the executive defendants would not be dropped.

“This refusal requires additional filings to ensure this litigation is completed, and the citizens will bear the continued and unnecessary litigation costs related to those filings,” Ivey wrote.

Concerning the possibility of mediation, Ivey responded by saying that early in the game, in July and August of 2014, the defendants offered to enter mediation, but were rebuffed.

“Instead, the meritless claims were filed and have now been adjudicated in the defendants’ favor by the court,” Ivey wrote. “There does not appear to be any viable remaining claim left to mediate. The citizens now have invested handsomely in this litigation and are entitled to certainty and finality.”

This story was originally published August 18, 2016 at 6:59 PM with the headline "Attorneys in Darr v. Columbus exchange letters."