Michigan Supreme Court orders release of Detroit Mayor’s documents
The NY Times reports:
The Michigan Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the release of a trove of documents that revealed how Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick of Detroit and city lawyers tried to cover up Mr. Kilpatrick’s extramarital affair with his chief of staff, as well as text messages that could expose the mayor to perjury charges.
The seven justices voted unanimously to reject the city’s appeal to keep the documents secret, ending a two-month battle between Mr. Kilpatrick’s staff and Michigan’s two largest newspapers, The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News, in which the City Council had condemned the mayor’s secrecy.
Among the documents released was a 196-page deposition transcript indicating that in October Mr. Kilpatrick agreed to settle a police whistle-blower lawsuit for $8.4 million, hours after learning that the lawyer for the plaintiffs former police officers who claimed they had been unfairly dismissed planned to make public copies of text messages showing that the mayor and his chief of staff, Christine Beatty, were having an affair.
Before learning of the text messages about a month after the plaintiffs won their lawsuit against the city in September, the city had been unwilling to discuss such a \”global settlement,\” giving up its right to appeal, the officers’ lawyer, Michael Stefani, said in the deposition.