VIDEO: Tamara Greene Lawyer to Steamline Case
BIRMINGHAM, Mich. (AP) – An attorney representing the children of a slain Detroit stripper has dropped the one-time girlfriend of former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, the city’s ex-police chief and other officials from a civil lawsuit that claims they stifled the investigation into her death.
By dismissing all but Kwame Kilpatrick and the city of Detroit, lawyer Norman Yatooma said Tuesday he expects to lessen the time it takes to get the case to trial in federal court.
Yatooma represents Tamara Greene’s three children, ages 17, 14 and 9.
“We’re getting rid of the baggage that’s slowing us down,” he told reporters in his Birmingham office, about 13 miles northwest of Detroit. “Frankly, we don’t need them. The city of Detroit we need. Kwame Kilpatrick we need.
“We are intent on getting this case to trial before my young clients grow old.”
The trial is scheduled to start in January 2011.
Kilpatrick’s former chief of staff and ex-girlfriend, Christine Beatty; and Ella Bully-Cummings, who he appointed police chief, still will be witnesses in the lawsuit. Yatooma said he plans to have Kilpatrick give a deposition.
Kilpatrick was mayor in 2003 when Greene was shot to death outside her Detroit home. Her murder has not been solved.
The 28-year-old, whose stage name was “Strawberry,” was rumored to have performed at a never-proven wild party at the mayor’s official Manoogian Mansion residence in 2002.
Yatooma is seeking $150 million — and answers. A check, alone, “will not get it done,” he said.
“We need some resolution. We still want to know what happened,” Yatooma said. “We don’t know who was responsible for the cover up. We know only that it came down from high ranking officials and that some of the feet on the street were required to carry it out.”
Besides Beatty and Bully-Cummings, three other police officials and several unnamed officers also were dropped from the lawsuit beginning Friday. Each could be brought back in as defendants “if evidence demonstrated their specific involvement,” Yatooma said.
In return for Beatty’s dismissal, her lawyers said Tuesday that they agreed not to seek sanctions or attorney’s fees from the plaintiffs or Yatooma’s firm.
“She never should have been named as a defendant in the case,” Jeffrey Morganroth said.
Morganroth said his firm planned to file its own motion to dismiss Beatty at the conclusion of the discovery phase of the case.
“We felt it was a very strong motion,” he said. “We intended to send the motion for sanctions and attorney’s fees.”
Morganroth was not sure how high those fees would have been. “There was a lot more to be done in the case,” he said.
That kind of arrangement is “pretty standard” during a voluntary dismissal from a lawsuit, said Kenneth Lewis, Bully-Cumming’s lawyer.
Bully-Cummings, who retired in September 2009, also should have been dismissed from the civil suit a while ago, Lewis added.
Beatty resigned her post in early 2008 after sexually explicit text messages revealed a tryst with the married mayor, and that each had lied under other oath during a whistle-blowers’ trial about their relationship and the firing of a police official.
Perjury and other charges were lodged against the pair.
Kilpatrick stepped down as mayor after entering pleas to obstruction of justice and assault. He was released in February 2009 after spending 99 days in jail but was sentenced last month to up to five years in prison for violating probation.
Beatty spent 69 days in jail for obstruction of justice.
http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/latest_video/Tamara-Greene-Lawyer-To-Steamline-Case
