All parties involved are being tight-lipped about a reported settlement in Greg Evans’ federal discrimination lawsuit against the Park District of Oak Park.
According to the federal Northern District Court case Web site, a settlement was reached April 7, subject to the approval of a judicial committee. The parties are scheduled to meet with Judge Sidney Schenkier on May 5 at 9 a.m. to discuss the settlement terms, which would end a process that has been both burdensome and expensive for the park district.
Neither Evans nor his attorney, David Porter, nor Park District Executive Director Gary Balling would comment on the development, even to confirm the settlement. After conferring with his attorney, Balling said on Thursday that it wouldn’t be appropriate to comment at the current time.
On Monday, Porter said, “There’s nothing I can really say about it.” Asked if he’d be in a position to discuss any details after the May 5 court date, Porter replied, “I really can’t comment.”
On Oct. 15, 2007, Evans, who was fired in November 2005, filed a $300,000 discrimination suit in federal court against Balling, Superintendent of Recreation Matt Ellman and the park district.
Evans accused Balling and Ellmann of violating his civil rights. Specifically, he alleged, the two “engaged in unwarranted hostile verbal and written comments to and about [Evans] and other black individuals,” treated him adversely compared to white employees, and blamed Evans for things that were not his fault, but rather that of white employees.
Evans alleges Balling also “engaged in a pattern and practice of attempting to increase the number of high level white employees and reduce the number and powers of high-level black employees employed by the park district.”
Balling has denied those allegations, calling them “utterly false and baseless and defamatory.”
Last Dec. 11, Balling filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court against Evans, seeking at least $50,000 and alleging that Evans soiled his good name in an e-mail sent to Wednesday Journal, among others, on March 22, 2006.
Balling withdrew the suit in February, “with leave to reinstate.”
Porter said Balling filed his complaint with the circuit court just six days after Evans appeared at the Maybrook Courthouse to testify in a criminal trespassing case against an Oak Park resident, Les Golden, in which Golden was eventually found guilty. Porter charged that Balling’s suit amounted to payback.
An expensive process
Hints of just how expensive and time consuming the lawsuit has been for the park district surfaced at two status hearings last year. According to court transcripts of a July 30 court hearing, park district attorney Gregory R. James, Jr. told Judge Elaine Bucklo, “I do have some objections to the requests for production. They are very, very lengthy and very overbroad.”
James also told Bucklo it would take time to prepare for the 79 witnesses Evans possibly planned to call. Replied Bucklo, “79 witnesses?”
“I’m not being critical,” said James, “but I’ve got the Rule 26 disclosures and the answers here. That’s not from my side. I think I disclosed about 15 [witnesses]. There are, bear with me, 91 separate requests for production, and I have a list of them here. They are incredibly detailed,” James told the judge.
On Nov. 8, Porter told the judge the park district released “over 30,000 pages of documents,” during the discovery process. At that same hearing, another park district attorney, Thomas S. Bradley, told Judge Bucklo that the case had taken up “hundreds of hours of attorney and park district staff time.
“I can just tell you that we spent hundreds of hours. We are a public entity; we spent hundreds of hours reviewing these documents, putting them in a way that [Porter] could review them,” he said. “It was not our intention to spend hundreds of hours of attorney time at the public expense to do this just as some folly or lark. We did this because he asked for the documents.”
“OK. I realize discovery is expensive,” Bucklo replied.