SEATTLE — Just three weeks after a federal judge levied severe legal sanctions against the city of Seattle for deleting thousands of text messages between high-ranking officials during the three-week Capitol Hill Organized Protests, the city has settled a lawsuit filed by affected businesses.
The Seattle City Attorney’s Office filed notice of a settlement Wednesday in U.S. District Court. The notice didn’t contain details and gives the parties until March 10 to finalize the settlement.
Neither the private law firm defending the city nor attorneys for the involved businesses immediately responded to messages seeking comment.
More than a dozen businesses, led by Seattle developer Hunters Capital, all located in and around the eight-block area that became known as CHOP, sued for damages on June 24, 2020. Their attorneys sent a series of letters to the city demanding that any evidence pertaining to the city’s alleged support and encouragement of the zone’s creation be retained, according to the court docket and pleadings.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly concluded last month that officials ignored the notifications, sending the so-called Hunters Capital lawsuit to trial on two of five claims and dismissing three others. In doing so, Zilly issued a blistering order that leveled crippling sanctions against the city for the deletion of tens of thousands of text messages from city phones sent between former Mayor Jenny Durkan, former Police Chief Carmen Best, Fire Chief Harold Scoggins and four other ranking city officials during the protests.
The judge found significant evidence that the destruction of CHOP evidence was intentional and that officials tried for months to hide the text deletions from opposing attorneys.
He also ordered the city to pay the attorneys fees for those who showed city leaders destroyed significant evidence about their decision-making during CHOP, including their move to abandon the Police Department’s East Precinct.
“The Court finds substantial circumstantial evidence that the city acted with the requisite intent necessary to impose a severe sanction and that the city’s conduct exceeds gross negligence,” Zilly wrote.
For that reason, Zilly said he’d instruct the jury during an eventual civil trial that it may presume the text messages were detrimental to the city’s legal position and that there’s significant circumstantial evidence they were deleted intentionally. He singled out Durkan, saying her excuse for the deletions “strained credibility.”
The Seattle Times sued the city over Durkan’s missing texts, settling the lawsuit for $200,000 and a promise by the city to improve its public records process.
Zilly’s order also sanctioned Michael Malone of Hunters Capital for deleting text messages that should have been preserved — and ruled that the city’s attorneys would be able to present that finding to the jury. Hunters Capital claims it lost $2.9 million in business as a result of CHOP.
In another order last month, Zilly dismissed three of five claims against the city that were filed by the Hunters Capital plaintiffs, including allegations that the city violated their right to due process, allegations of negligence, and illegal taking of their property and civil rights.
However, Zilly concluded that the jury should hear evidence alleging the city “directly participated” in creating CHOP through its decision to provide portable toilets, hand-washing stations, dumpsters and other accommodations during the three-week protest.
And he said a jury should decide whether the city’s actions amounted to a “right-of-access taking” by allowing the protesters to interfere with access to their businesses.
