A secret agreement that benefits only Mayor Daley. A mysterious side issue that stops a settlement in its tracks. Lawyers refusing to talk because of a gag order that nobody ordered. What’s going on? Why doesn’t the city settle with three victims of police torture and stop paying private attorneys public money to negotiate with them?
aThey wouldn’t pursue Daley’s deposition.
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According to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, and as we reported in July, the two sides came to terms last November 3. When they met on December 27 before Judge Marvin Aspen, who’d been mediating the talks, the city gave no indication of any problem. Assured that a settlement was at hand, Madison Hobley signed a contract to buy a house. Soon, however, Burns let it be known that a problem had arisen. This was an issue, he said, that had nothing directly to do with the three cases, but it needed to be resolved and he couldn’t tell the plaintiffs what it was. Presumably Burns told Judge Aspen. On January 11 Aspen informed the plaintiffs that the “minor” issue had been resolved and the paperwork could be completed in a matter of days.
But weeks passed. At a status hearing on February 13, Burns said the mysterious issue was still not resolved, there was no telling when it would be, the plaintiffs could do nothing to clear it up, and he had no idea when the city would sign the agreement.
According to a courthouse regular who’s familiar with Aspen’s mediation procedures, there was surely “an implicit understanding of confidentiality.” But such an understanding always exists when court-supervised settlements are being negotiated. And when the negotiations are over there’s no enforceable judicial order forbidding anyone from saying what went on in chambers. An implicit understanding falls far short of what Georges’s first deputy, Karen Seimetz, told the City Council Finance Committee on September 4. The committee was discussing a resolution submitted by aldermen Howard Brookins and Ed Smith that expressed outrage at the “estimated $10 million in legal fees accumulated defending both the city and the accused officers” and demanded that the payments cease and the Finance Committee swiftly approve a settlement in all outstanding cases. Seimetz responded that she was barred by a judicial order from discussing the settlement negotiations in the Hobley, Howard, and Orange cases. Brookins was furious. “We are the client,” he said. “She cannot be precluded from telling us what happened in court. She represents us.”
Last fall, after terms were reached in the Hobley, Orange, and Howard suits, Judge Aspen held a mediation session in the Patterson case. Burns, Georges, Aspen, representatives of the city’s insurance company, and Patterson’s attorney, Frank Avila, were present. According to a source who’s spoken with two of the people who attended, Avila had sought assurances in advance from Burns that the negotiations would be swift (the Hobley, Orange, and Howard cases have taken years to settle) and a reasonable offer would be on the table from the get-go, but Avila got no reply. At the meeting, an offer of $1 million so infuriated Avila that at one point, when the judge wasn’t there, he said something on the order of “This is bullshit. Fuck you.” Given the timing of the meeting and the city’s stated desire to settle all four cases at once, it seems likely that the failure to settle with Patterson is Burns’s “mysterious issue.”
But Mayor Daley likes her. After Sorich was convicted he was quoted in the Tribune saying Georges has been a “very, very good corporation counsel . . . full of integrity, honesty, dedication.”
