Metro expects to reach a settlement soon in an open-records lawsuit that triggered a series of accusations and investigations that gripped the transit agency for months, board chairman Gilbert Garcia said.
The trial of the lawsuit by attorney and former City Controller Lloyd Kelley, scheduled to begin Monday in state district court, has been pulled from the docket because of the settlement talks, Garcia said. Any settlement would have to be approved by the Metropolitan Transit Authority board.
Garcia declined to discuss details of the proposed settlement except to say he was confident the case would be resolved soon. Neither Kelley nor his attorney, Michael West, could be reached for comment Sunday.
This was the document shredding lawsuit, whose initial hearings led to allegations of hanky panky between now-former Metro CEO Frank Wilson and his chief of staff for which a subsequent forensic accounting review found no incriminating evidence. The lawsuit by Pauline Higgins, Metro’s former chief counsel, is still ongoing. If this does get settled, that will be one more thing that the new Metro board can cross off its to-be-dealt-with list. It will also almost surely mean we’ll never know what Kelley was looking for, or on whose behalf he was looking. I’ll take that trade, and I’m sure the Metro board will as well.