TRAVERSE CITY -- Grand Traverse County asked a judge to order its former public works attorney to turn over an estimated 42,000 pages of documents related to county business, including records for its troubled septage treatment plant.
The county filed the action last week against former attorney Michael Houlihan, after the Board of Public Works spent more than four months attempting to negotiate a price for recovering 28 years of records from its ex-lawyer.
"It's one of those things that just seemed to me relatively disingenuous on Mr. Houlihan's part to think we would pay him for files on our business that we paid him to create," Board of Public Works Chairman Chuck Korn. "It just seemed a little odd."
The county said in court documents that Houlihan's actions are an attempt to use his control of the county's files "for his own personal gain." Houlihan's initial bill for spending 163 hours organizing, reviewing, indexing and copying files related solely to the septage plant was over $32,000.
The county offered $3,000 for copies and said it never asked for Houlihan's additional work.
"Ongoing file organization and maintenance is a task that plaintiff believes would be a part of a reasonable attorney's duty to adequately represent his client," wrote attorney Scott Howard, who succeeded Houlihan as BPW attorney.
Houlihan's attorney, Stephen Turner of Grand Rapids, said in January that Houlihan owns the files and has a right to charge a reasonable amount for his time to review and copy the documents. Turner did not immediately respond to messages left at his office on Monday.
Howard maintains the BPW owns the files, and it's up to Houlihan to copy any files he wants and give the originals back to the county.
Houlihan and county officials eventually agreed on a price -- $5,000 -- but Houlihan also wanted to be released from any liability for all matters not related to the septage plant.
The county rejected that offer.
"I don't have any reason to believe there are any other claims out there, but who knows," Howard said. "We haven't looked at the files."
Howard said he hopes for a quick settlement but acknowledged the dispute could end up at the state Court of Appeals because Michigan law doesn't directly address whether a client or attorney owns such files.
"We want to resolve it favorably to my client, and we would hope we could do that in short order," Howard said. "But if it takes a court ruling that sets precedent for the state of Michigan, that's fine, but that's not the first and foremost goal here."
The lawsuit over the files is separate from the county's investigation of possible professional negligence by Houlihan in his role as both project manager and attorney for the septage plant. An outside engineering firm hired by the county determined both Houlihan and the plant's design firm, Gourdie-Fraser Inc. of Traverse City, failed to follow professional standards of care in determining the size and financial viability of the plant.
A tank wall collapsed a month after the plant opened in 2005 and the oversized plant is expected to lose $300,000 this year and up to $700,000 in 2011.
Gourdie-Fraser challenged assertions of negligence and entered into a dispute resolution process called for in its contract with the county.
