ATTORNEY/CLIENT SESSION CITY OF LAKE WORTH- Part IV - NOVEMBER 14, 2012

ATTORNEY/CLIENT SESSION

CITY OF LAKE WORTH

CITY OF LAKE WORTH

CITY MANAGER'S OFFICE

7 NORTH DIXIE HIGHWAY

LAKE WORTH, FLORIDA

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2012

4:52 p.m. - 6:15 p.m.

IN ATTENDANCE: 

Pam Triolo, Mayor

Scott Maxwell, Vice Mayor

Christopher McVoy, Commissioner

Andy Amoroso, Commissioner

Michael Bornstein, City Manager

Glen Torciva, Esquire, Interim City Attorney

Brian Joslyn, Esquire, Outside Counsel

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[People mentioned, other than listed "In Attendance", in order of mention: Susan Stanton, McNamara, McCally, Damon Chase, Cara Jennings, Exline, Lucerne.]

MAYOR TRIOLO: Commissioner McVoy?

COMMISSIONER MCVOY: Yeah. I think as somebody who was involved in one of them I think I might have a bit more insight into who the people were and I think your statement that it was all the same people or kind of the same people is a little bit disingenuous. The only thing that's the same people is your office has been making money off of every single lawsuit all along the way.

MR. JOSLYN: Well we've also won every single lawsuit all along the way.

COMMISSIONER MCVOY: Maybe so but there is an issue there that is somewhat of concern.

MAYOR TRIOLO: He didn't file the lawsuits.

COMMISSIONER MCVOY: Whatever.

MR. JOSLYN: I take a Koranic view of this. I'm at the sword of my master.

MAYOR TRIOLO: The first question I asked when we came to these meetings from the very, very beginning when I spoke with Susan Stanton when she was the City Manager is why are we retaining the same lawyer to proceed further, I'm sorry, I've said this to you before, why are we retaining the same lawyer to represent us in these cases that is the same lawyer that told us to make the decision we made way back when. And that's the first conversation I had with Susan and Elaine years ago but here we are today.

COMMISSIONER MCVOY: Here we are today and I think we're getting a little side tracked but I'd like to be clear that I, the PAC had five people to it. To my knowledge and I think my knowledge is pretty accurate none of those people had any involvement or any overlap in any form with Save Our Neighborhood. Thay had no involvement with the contract suit that McNamara and McCally brought and I forget what the other groups were.

MR. JOSLYN: I'll tell you this, though. People you had out there that were getting signatures were involved in all these other cases.

COMMISSIONER MCVOY: Not to my knowledge but, you know, there may be some people.

MR. BORNSTEIN: Mayor?

MAYOR TRIOLO: Yes.

MR. BORNSTEIN: I know that all we're saying is related to our thought process in terms of settling this case, and I don't want to get far afield at all, let me maybe bring you back to -- Mike just stepped out a minute but I think that his comment earlier and my thoughts, I'm not sure what the Mayor's is, when you sit in these sessions and for your attorney to tell you his thoughts on the case, the pros and cons of the case, that's one thing. But when you sit in a mediation session and you hear both lawyers and you've heard the mediator and you're spending hours and hours analyzing it kind of intensely, and I took the same approach as Mike did. I was the jury. I was sitting there as a juror hearing Brian's presentation, hearing Damon's presentation and we had a similar, I think the Mayor had a similar reaction. 

MAYOR TRIOLO: I did as well.

MR. BORNSTEIN: We're in trouble on this case. All those other cases I know play into it, but the concern that I think all three of us had is that there's a better than 50/50 chance, and two mediators as he said and the jury consultants that we're going to lose. And then the question is how much could we lose. And it's again hard to quantify but I think the consensus was we had a realistic shot at getting hit with 5 and 7 and a half million dollars. That in my mind was the range. So if you've got a 60 percent or 70 percent chance of losing 5, 6, 7, $8 million then it comes down to well, how do we minimize that risk? What can we do? And one of my goals was to get whatever that bottom number was going to be and it took us a long time to get them to that number.

MAYOR TRIOLO: We came in at --

MR. BORNSTEIN: We started at 300,000.

MR. JOSLYN: Bumped to 5. But I'll say this. In the first mediation session we had with these guys before we had done the discovery to take the depositions of all their consultants who hadn't been paid and all of that other stuff that we're going to use to bloody them up at trial, they weren't going to come below $10 million. 

MR. BORNSTEIN: Right. I think the team, Brian and everybody else, did a good job of getting down from -- the only conversation I had with Damon Chase was with Brian a few weeks ago and he was adamant, adamant that they would never ever take less than $3 million. We got them to half, almost 50 percent of what I thought was their bottom line. So really the question today is strategically litigation-wise do you avoid the risk of a 5, 6, $7 million judgment and additional attorney's fees because you'd have some cost of somewhere between 3 and 400,000 going forward.

MAYOR TRIOLO: Plus an appeal.

MR. BORNSTEIN: Plus the appeal or do you pay that difference, that 1.1 or $1.2 million difference? That's really what you're paying because you're going to pay 300 to fight the case or pay an additional 1.1 or 1.2 to resolve the case and avoid the risk.

MR. JOSLYN: In terms of my fees, my normal hourly rate is 400, four and a quarter an hour. I'm doing this 275 an hour and have been from the beginning. So it's not that I'm sitting here got you guys hooked up to the milking machine and full hourly rates.

MR. BORNSTEIN: It's not attorney's fees either. It's expert fees.

MR. JOSLYN: The jury simulations cost us $55,000 to get it done just for example.

MR. BORNSTEIN: From a risk standpoint at least my two cents are it's worth it for the City Commission to think about seriously putting this case behind you and as the Mayor said the parade at trial would give the City a black eye. The other side is going to make Cara Jennings and by implication the City look horrible. It was very disturbing when they talked about deposition transcripts and comments. I don't really know Cara Jennings that well. I've only met her once at a conference. But the image that they're going to portray, we'll have media coverage for a week that will be negative to the City and I don't know what the cost is of negative media coverage, but the jury is going to hear that too and I think the biggest concern I felt out of that was this was a political decision, it wasn't a legal decision by the City Commission. They politically wanted to end the Greater Bay case and we shouldn't be punished for the City's politics. That's what Damon, if I'm on the jury I'm like yeah, you're right, you shouldn't be punished because they made a political decision. We'll argue legally we had the right to do it and everything else, but if the media keeps coming back to the smell test, it doesn't smell right. Commissioner gets elected, a week later you pull the plug. What happened in that one week to all of a sudden change the vote? And there wasn't anything on the record to change the vote. So I think we legally had the right to do it, but the emotional part of a jury I think they're going to say maybe you had the right to do it but these guys got screwed. I think that's the word somebody used, they got screwed. And they will award payment for that. 

MAYOR TRIOLO: Commissioner Amoroso?

COMMISSIONER AMOROSO: Real quick. Brian, I didn't understand that you were part of all these other lawsuits too. If you had to estimate what kind of money we spent on these other lawsuits, where would we be? 

MR. JOSLYN: Oh, my gosh.

COMMISSIONER AMOROSO: Just an estimate. We could look back to get clarification.

MR. JOSLYN: I think the two lawsuits in the middle while this was going on with Greater Bay was around $40,000. Exline was actually a summary judgment argument after depositions. Really, I'm not sure.

COMMISSIONER AMOROSO: Hundred thousand, 200,000?

MR. JOSLYN: The other couple of lawsuits, the attorney's fee award on Lucerne was $36,000 split in half between Mr. McNamara and his attorney. Around 40 for the two lawsuits going on while this was going on. Save Our Neighborhood we got involved real late on that so I just attended the final hearing and attended the appeal, 50 maybe. And this the last bill I just sent a bill today for $98,000 including costs of about 10 and we have billed to date $687,000.

COMMISSIONER AMOROSO: 687 plus we would add our own attorney to that and in-house staff because our attorney was working with you and in-house staff for public records and all that. 

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