Right Rudder Lawsuit Dismissed?

At the last meeting on May 26th, Commissioner Rebecca Bays brought up that the county should offer to end the lawsuit it is in with Right Rudder Aviation. That was very much unexpected.

If you recall, about a year ago, Right Rudder's contract was terminated by the county as the county claimed it violated several parts of the FBO contract it had signed. This was a 4-1 vote with Bays, Davis, Finegan and Barek voting to terminate and Kinnard voting to keep the contract in place.

Right Rudder sued the county to try to convince the courts that the termination was invalid and get the courts to reverse it. The county counter sued to attempt to force an eviction. That hearing is scheduled for July 30th.

My question here is why the sudden desire to try to end the lawsuit? This was out of left field, so something triggered the desire to end this.

Was it purely a financial decision? I recall someone saying we have spent close to $60k on the litigation portion of this issue. That does not account for how much the county has spent on the aviation attorney Chris Wilson. I stopped counting there when the lawsuit started, but it was over $30k in legal fees related to Right Rudder. I would imagine that could be over $50k by now, although with the litigation, he may have stepped back.

In any case, close to $100k has been spent on this contract termination and now we are just going to drop it out of the blue and get NOTHING in return?

Remember, the county claimed they are in violation of several parts of their contract. Dropping the suit means that the county accepts those violations and will allow them to continue for the remaining two years of the contract.

What message does that send to those who have contracts with the county? Break them and we will not pursue the enforcement because it costs money?

While I said in the beginning this was triggered by some behind the scenes shenanigans and should have never been brought up to begin with, we are now $100k into this and we are just going to drop it? Legal fees for the county's litigation are capped at $100k. This figure does not include Wilson's fees and is only the litigation as we have insurance that covers beyond $100k.

The entire thing should have been avoided to begin with, but we are over halfway to the cap now. Seems at this point we might as well continue through and see what happens, although there is risk that the county loses and is forced to pay legal fees for Right Rudder.

This was the argument for not pushing through the Betz Farm cancellation. The commissioners feared they would lose and have to pay excessive damages.

Remember, the commissioners were adamant that Right Rudder was a horrible FBO when they voted to terminate the contract... now they can live with those deficiencies?

So what happened?

I do find it interesting that comes up at the next meeting following Right Rudder's request for more discovery on May 13th.

Why is the timing interesting? Because Right Rudder wants personal call and texts messages from Commissioners and several staffers.

Specifically for commissioners, here are the requests for production.

Then there is this.

and this

I had shown previously that Bays had several behind the scenes conversations via text with Alonda McCarthy regarding the corporate hangar which is now part of the heli-plex (which the county never formally discussed), that is being built for Alonda's business, Livewire Aviation.

As you see, that is A LOT of information that Right Rudder wants as part of the discovery and that does not include the staff requests.

Now, at the very next meeting, Bays wants to cancel the lawsuit? This would avoid all that discovery.

While they will say it is to protect tax payer dollars, FOUR of them did not seem to care about that when they voted to cancel the contract. Now, one of them is suddenly concerned about tax dollars when we have spent over $100k on this?

Nah, not buying that. For me personally, I would love to see what this discovery produces. Something shook them and it is more than legal fees.

The other question is does Right Rudder agree to drop the lawsuit? They have spent thousands of dollars on litigation as well. They are asking for legal fees as part of the suit. Do they push back and take the risk that they are successful to recoup those fees... or do they just agree to drop and operate for the next two years like none of this has happened?

Let's see how it goes on Thursday next week!