Lawsuit could cost $25,000
Published 2:25 pm Saturday, December 31, 2005
County Commission Chairman Wiley Kitchens revisited an old source of contention at the courthouse last week, claiming that a frivolous lawsuit needlessly cost county taxpayers many thousands of dollars.
“It’s a slap in the face to the citizens of this county to make them pay for a lawsuit that had no justification,” said Kitchens.
According to Kitchens, when Revenue Commissioner Kay Smith sued the County Commission, she forced the tax payers to pay more than $19,000 for her own legal fees and an estimated $6,000 to $8,000 for the commissions.
The exact legal cost for the commission could not be determined because, according to Kitchens, their lawyer James Rea, had not yet billed them for his services.
Smith sued the commission in July 2005, claiming that the commission would not allow her to fill vacancies in her department.
“I just wanted my vacancies filled when people left,” said Smith. “We tried to work with him. He wouldn’t work with us. He would say ‘I don’t have anything to say to you’ or ‘You’re not getting anybody. You don’t need anybody.”
Kitchens claimed that it was simply a miscommunication.
“There was never really a hiring freeze,” said Kitchen. “It’s just that you could only replace what you had lost.”
“We could never really make heads or tales of what she had and what she didn’t have,” he said.
By the time the suit was filed, Kitchens said the commission was on the verge of allowing the hiring, claiming that he had already worked the deal out with the county attorney and the other commissioners.
Smith claimed that Kitchen’s alleged proposal was untrue.
“I’ll tell you that’s a lie,” said Smith. “He never said one word about it. The only words out of his mouth were ‘no, no, no.'”
Kitchens said Smith’s suit was frivolous because, unknown to the commission at the time, Smith had access to a hiring fund that she could have used without permission from the commission.
“No one knew anything about it,” said Kitchens. “If we had, we would have encouraged her to use it.”
“If she needed to hire two people she could have hired them out of that fund and avoided that $19,000,” he said.
Kitchens also said that the county was forced to absorb the legal fees because it was one county agency suing another.
“Our insurance only covers legal fees if it’s for the benefit of the county or to defend itself from an outside party,” said Kitchens. “This was neither. It would be like a wife suing her husband because he wouldn’t put enough money in her check book.”
The case was settled in late September when the commission allowed Smith to hire more employees.
Both sides claimed that was what they had intended the whole time.
According to Kitchens, that brings the revenue commission’s employee count to 47, including Smith.