03/02/1999 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 3/2/99 ~ 2) He has previously reported on the Link case where the city was sued for defamation of ;. character because there was an error relative to the passing on of information to a subsequent employer dealing with drug testing. The error was corrected immediately, but Mr. Link chose to file suit against the city. Insurance counsel has been notified that the Law Department will handle this case. Notice was given to Mr. Link's attorney that the city had immunity and that we requested the case be dismissed. If it was not dismissed, we would seek an action for frivolous conduct. A case management conference was set, and Mr. Link's attorney did not show up. It has been reset for another date. Also, the lawyer has not gotten service on the City of North Olmsted. This is not difficult to do- all you need is an address. 3) With respect to Manor Care, the Building Department was asked to send the entire file over to the Law Department to be handled as a civil matter rather than a criminal matter. That was done last Friday. Yesterday, the lawsuit was prepared requesting a temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction and permanent injunction as is required by the rules of court in Cuyahoga County. You must notify opposing counsel if you intend to seek a temporary restraining order. Calls were made to Manor Care. We received calls back from corporate counsel in Maryland. Last night about 6:30 p.m., we received a call from local counsel. This morning a tentative agreement was reached-something that would have been reached had we gone to court anyway-that between last night and today the shield was put on the one light that gravitates over onto the adjoining property. We have no idea how that shield is going to work, but have included in the agreement that within the next two or three days we will have a meeting with legal counsel, the Councilman and a Building Department representative to determine what sources of light are gravitating over onto the adjoining property and those sources will be extinguished and abated. If they are not extinguished and abated, then we will go into court and ask the court to issue a temporary restraining order. And presumably, we will go on for a preliminary injunction. In his opinion, this was the most expeditious way of handling this type of a matter. Manor Care was looking for further extensions, telling us that they had ordered the shields and that they would not be in for another month or so, and that just was not acceptable. We are determined to either shield the lights or extinguish the lights. 4) Today Assistant Director of Law Jim Dubelko attended a land use seminar. This event is attended annually by either Mr. Gareau or Mr. Dubelko as it a means of becoming up-to-date on zoning matters and related issues. 5) A telephone conference was held on the Griffith case to set up schedules for discovery and matters of that nature. This is the case where the city has been sued as a result of a suicide in our jail. Because this is acomputer-generated case, everything is done by phone. Finance Director Copfer: 1) The 1997 Springvale special audit assistant deputy was on site last week to review the work papers and records from the regular 1997 audit. She needs some initial assessment work to be completed and then will be scheduling apre- audit committee meeting with Council to review the recommended procedures to be performed. Mrs. Copfer has made it very clear that she, City Council and the Mayor want to be involved in the front end of this 1997 special audit. The deputy auditor stated that is the Auditor of State's standard operating procedure, and we will be kept on top of it before the costs are incurred. 2