I just got a call from the taxpayer’s attorney Craig Hunter. He’d received a fat juicy packet from the lawyers representing the School District. They are requesting that the Court require that the plaintiffs post a bond for the construction delays the court case would cause the District. Even before we met Mr. Hunter this was a major concern. It is what the Duluth Teacher’s Union President, Frank Wanner, was joking about his class at Central High when he suggested I would be ruined financially.
The assertion by the District is that taxpayers could have figured out the objections we are now presenting to the Court about the uncompetitive contract they entered in to with JCI a long time ago. If I had been an attorney. If I had researched the applicable laws. If I had then followed up by researching case law. Well, under these circumstances maybe.
The Doctrine that the District is relying on is similar to but not the same as the familiar statute of limitations. Its a doctrine I’ve only just learned about called laches. Mr. Hunter has explained this to me in detail and he is confident it does not apply to our case.
There are a number of reasons only a couple of which spring to my mind. For one thing laches applies if a plaintiff knew or should have known what was happening and could have stopped it early. As I’ve pointed out this barely applies to me.
It also presumes that most of the work that the plaintiff is attempting to halt has already been completed. Since only about $10 million of $293 million has been expended so far on the Red Plan about 5% of the total it is manifestly not too late to prevent most of the damage that the taxpayer’s face.
Additionally, it requires that the defendants, the District and JCI, have clean hands. This argument falls apart if the contract was unlawful and injurious to the tax payers. We have, of course, demonstrated that the contract was not competitively bid out as the District’s policy and state law require. We have also pointed out that the contract obligated the District to use Johnson Controls for whatever price JCI later named and forbade the District from backing out at a later date. This would be like agreeing to buy a car and then asking the salesman how much the car cost. The defendants can not possibly claim to have clean hands under these nefarious circumstances.
Mr. Hunter will address these points to the court and do it with the proper nuances this short summary lacks.
The import of this is that the District’s request to strangle the plaintiffs financially will have to be addressed very shortly after our hearing on May 22nd, next Friday. Its possible that even if the contract is unlawful the imposition of a bond could put an end to our legal challenge as the plaintiffs are not going to be willing to post a bond that could end up costing tens of millions of dollars. Mr. Hunter is looking forward to next Friday. So am I. I’ll be delighted to give Mr. Wanner another hour worth of politics to piddle his student’s time away with. Hey, its spring. They aren’t studying anymore.
