Judge denies request for more time to depose Cox in stripper lawsuit
Detroit — A federal judge today denied a request to extend the length of Attorney General Mike Cox’s deposition in a federal lawsuit over a slain exotic dancer.
Witnesses in civil lawsuits can only be deposed for seven hours without a court order to extend the deposition.
On Dec. 11, Cox was deposed all day in the lawsuit brought by the family of dancer Tamara “Strawberry” Greene against the city of Detroit, former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, and other top city and police officials. But because of numerous interruptions, only a little over three hours of the seven-hour deposition time was used.
Norman Yatooma, the lawyer for Greene’s family, asked Chief U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen to extend the time for questioning Cox beyond seven hours when the deposition resumes Monday.
But in an order today, Rosen said no.
Greene, who was linked to a rumored stripper party at the mayor’s Manoogian Mansion in the fall of 2002, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Detroit on April 30, 2003.
Her family is suing the city, Kilpatrick and other city defendants, alleging they obstructed the investigation of her still-unsolved killing for political reasons. Kilpatrick and the other defendants deny the allegations.
Cox, who is not a defendant in the case and is seeking the Republican nomination for governor, investigated the rumored Manoogian Mansion party in 2003 and declared it an urban legend. He did not investigate Greene’s killing.
“The attorney general volunteered to stay late and finish this back in December and is looking forward to returning on Monday to help the court,” said Cox spokesman John Sellek.
Rosen said in his order that it’s true Yatooma was impeded and delayed in his questioning of Cox on Dec. 11, but said Yatooma “shares at least some of the blame” for the lack of progress that day because he “devoted significant time to matters that were either irrelevant or outside the scope of the Attorney General’s personal knowledge, as well as to questions that had previously been asked and answered.”
Rosen said he’s not prepared to issue a “blank check” to extend the time for the deposition.
“The Attorney General is not a party to this suit and, while his testimony may be relevant to some of the issues in this case, the court cannot say, at this juncture, that he is a critical witness who played any sort of central role in the alleged events that form the basis for plaintiffs’ claims,” Rosen said.
“Moreover, the Attorney General is a high-ranking government official with a number of important demands upon his time.”
If at the end of seven hours Yatooma still feels he has specific questions he needs to ask, he can make a new motion, Rosen said. However, “a properly focused inquiry, in the court’s view, is unlikely to exceed the seven-hour limit,” he said.
