Attorneys for the state and the class of black students known as the Joshua intervenors in the 31-year old Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit are in a disagreement over legal fees.
The previously undisclosed dispute over state legal fees to the intervenors came to light late Wednesday. That’s when a draft consent judgment, jointly prepared by attorneys in the case, was submitted to U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. for his consideration and possible signature.
At a Jan. 13 court hearing,Marshall verbally approved a landmark settlement that was negotiated late last year by Arkansas, the three Pulaski County school districts and two groups of intervenors representing employees of the school districts and black students.
The settlement includes a provision on reimbursement of legal fees by the state to the other parties, including $500,000 to the Joshua intervenors “unless contested, in which event the Court may award a reasonable fee.”
The draft consent order, which acknowledges the judge’s oral approval of the settlement and is meant to effectuate the terms of the agreement, describes what parties are to be dismissed from the long-running case and the parts of the case in which the judge retains jurisdiction.
A sentence in the proposed order states that the court will “address the dispute between the Joshua Intervenors and the State” regarding the legal-fees provision in the settlement agreement.
Efforts to reach Rep. John Walker, D-Little Rock, the lead attorney for the Joshua intervenors, at his office, home and on his cellphone were not successful Wednesday evening. Joy Springer, Walker’s longtime assistant in the case, referred questions about the legal fees and any dispute to Walker.
Aaron Sadler, a spokesman for Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel and the attorney general’s office, said in an email Wednesday night that it was “unresolved” whether the Joshua intervenors would petition Marshall for a larger fee payment.
“We anticipate that will occur and have reserved the right to object,” Sadler added.
Sadler said a legal-fee disagreement does not threaten the hard-won negotiated agreement.
“That is a separate issue,” he said of a fee dispute. “It would not jeopardize the settlement.”
In addition to the reimbursement of fees for the Joshua intervenors, the settlement calls for the state to pay $250,000 in legal-fee reimbursements to the Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts and $75,000 to the Knight intervenors who represent teachers and other employees in the three districts.
The settlement language at issue states: “The State stipulates that Joshua Intervenors and the Knight Intervenors are prevailing parties as to the state with regard to certain motions filed subsequent to the 1989 Settlement Agreement that Joshua joined and which were successful against the State and are entitled to reasonable attorney’s fees, in the amount of $500,000for the Joshua Intervenors and in the amount of $75,000 for the Knight Intervenors unless contested, in which event the Court may award a reasonable fee unless otherwise agreed upon.”
At the January hearing where he approved the settlement from the bench, Marshall asked the attorneys to prepare the draft consent judgment for him.
The consent judgment, once finalized and signed by the judge, will replace the 1989 settlement agreement that had been the controlling document in the case. The 1989 agreement required the state to make desegregation payments to the three districts in an amount that had grown to almost $70 million a year with no termination date.
The new settlement calls for annual payments of $68.5 million for four more school years, ending after the 2017-18 school year.
“This is the substitute for the so-called 1989 consent-decree settlement agreement,” said Allen Roberts, an attorney for the Pulaski County Special School District. “This is the new one and it will become the operative document that dismisses everybody and preserves the arguments that are still there like the fee issue and the unitary status” for the Pulaski County Special district.
The 2½-page draft consent judgment states that the Pulaski County Special district will remain under court supervision until it is declared by the court to be in compliance with its court-approved desegregation plan and declared unitary in all areas of its operation.
The district has been released from court monitoring in some areas but not yet found in compliance with requirements in seven areas, including school facilities and student discipline practices. The district and the Joshua intervenors have worked out a plan in which any disputes they have regarding the district’s efforts to reach unitary status will be referred by Marshall to a federal magistrate judge.
The draft judgment also envisions the court retaining jurisdiction as necessary in regard to the state’s possible establishment of a new Jacksonville/North Pulaski County school district. The settlement permits the formation of a new district in a manner that conforms to state law. The draft judgment also calls on the court to stop the formation of any other new school district until the Pulaski County Special district is declared fully unitary.
The draft judgment, if finalized, would dismiss the state and all of its agencies and officers from the decades-old case. The Little Rock School District, the North Little Rock School District and the Knight intervenors also would be dismissed. (Although the Little Rock and North Little Rock districts have previously been declared unitary by the federal court, they have remained part of the desegregation case.)
“The Court retains jurisdiction only to the extent necessary to enforce the terms of this Judgment and Exhibit 1,” the draft order says. Exhibit 1 is the settlement agreement. “In any event, this limited retention of jurisdiction shall cease as of the last payment by the State under Exhibit 1.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/06/2014