Little Rock board inks contract with Arkansas Municipal League for litigation insurance pool in '22

Despite settlement dispute, city remains in litigation pool

LITTLE ROCK -- The Little Rock Board of Directors on Tuesday approved a new contract to participate in the Arkansas Municipal League's litigation insurance pool during at least the first part of next year.

Approval of the 2022 agreement came in spite of a dispute in the fall between some city officials and the Municipal League.

The Little Rock city attorney and several board members objected to the way the Municipal League and outside lawyers settled litigation with the estate of Bradley Blackshire, a 30-year-old man shot and killed by then-officer Charles Starks in 2019.

Blackshire's estate sued the city, Starks and Michael Simpson, who was the first officer to arrive at the scene of the shooting as backup. Simpson has since left the department.

The defense of the city and Simpson was turned over to the Municipal League, which then tapped outside lawyers, after City Attorney Tom Carpenter's office withdrew from the case in August 2020 based on a conflict related to separate litigation that had been filed against the police chief.

Starks was represented separately in the litigation by his attorney, Robert Newcomb.

Under the terms reached by Blackshire's estate and the outside lawyers, Little Rock agreed to pay $49,500 via the office of City Manager Bruce Moore, and the Municipal League agreed to pay $250,500 -- for a $300,000 sum to be divided among Blackshire's relatives and attorneys.

After the judge overseeing the case wrote of a preliminary settlement in the court docket in October, Carpenter argued that the agreement needed to get the city board's review based on his interpretation of the laws governing the city manager's unilateral authority to authorize payments of less than $50,000.

Additionally, Carpenter described the non-monetary components of the settlement -- it said Little Rock would implement additional training on the use of force within the Police Department, among other things -- as policy matters that required the board's oversight.

Board members eventually gave authorization for Moore to execute the settlement agreement, but many of them aired concerns about how they were left out of the loop.

The ordinance approved Tuesday authorizes the city manager to enter into an agreement to pay the Municipal League up to $448,000 for the litigation insurance pool in 2022.

That figure exceeds the $427,728 maximum payment to the Municipal League that the city board authorized late last year to cover 2021.

At a recent meeting, Carpenter suggested he would provide language to at-large City Director Dean Kumpuris -- one of the chief critics on the board of the way the settlement was handled -- that would allow Little Rock to end the contract sometime next year without penalty if the city went out to bid for a better option on insurance.

There was some back-and-forth Tuesday about whether the new language had been added; language in the version of the ordinance available online at the start of the meeting did not appear to include the new clause.

Kumpuris ended up making a motion to amend the ordinance to include the clause allowing the city to exit the agreement. His motion was approved, and moments later the board members approved the ordinance in a voice vote.

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