Attorney can get texts in Greene case
DETROIT — In a victory for the attorney representing the family of slain exotic dancer Tamara Greene and a blow to Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, a federal judge has ruled that text messages exchanged by Kilpatrick and other city officials must be released as part of a lawsuit against the city involving the dancer’s death.
U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen held that Norman Yatooma, the attorney for Greene’s family, could resubmit a request for the text messages under court evidentiary rules of discovery that would force the city of Detroit to produce the text messages.
“It is a necessary and routine incident of the rules of discovery that a court may order disclosures that a party would prefer not to make,” Rosen said in a ruling Friday. “This power of compulsion encompasses such measures as are necessary to secure a party’s compliance with its discovery obligations.”
Greene’s family is suing the mayor and other city and police officials for allegedly obstructing a police investigation into her unsolved 2003 killing.
Rosen held that provisions of the federal Stored Communications Act do not prohibit the release of the text messages if Yatooma requests them under court evidentiary rules — which require parties to disclose items in their control, including electronically stored information — instead of through a third-party subpoena.
Yatooma had subpoenaed text messages sent and received on the SkyTel pagers of Kilpatrick and other current or former city officials between 2002 and 2007. In March, the court ordered that magistrate judges would review messages obtained and determine which would be provided to Yatooma.
Kilpatrick has resisted the release of any text messages, saying they should remain private under provisions of the Stored Communications Act.
But Rosen said that interpretation would “establish … a sweeping prohibition against civil discovery of electronic communications.”
Yatooma called the ruling “enormously important.”
“The city has gone through such pains to hide these text messages,” he said Sunday. “It puts the greatest emphasis on how important these text messages must be.”
Mayoral spokesman James Canning said in a statement: “The legal team is still in the process of reviewing the judge’s ruling and once a thorough review has been completed, an appropriate course of action will be taken.”
Greene’s name was linked to a rumored, but unproven, party at the Manoogian Mansion, the mayor’s residence.
Curt Benson, a professor at Cooley Law School in Grand Rapids, said the ruling could leave “little room to argue that relevant information should not be produced.”
“The federal rules of discovery are very broad and very much for full disclosure,” he said. “This information is relevant, it’s not privileged, therefore it must be produced.”
Benson also called the ruling “an unappealable order. The rules do not provide for an appeal in this situation. The judge’s decision in this area is final.”
Rosen’s ruling comes after a federal appeals court decision in California that many legal observers believed would preclude courts from ordering text messages produced in civil lawsuits.
The June 18 ruling, in Quon v. Arch Wireless, said a wireless company violated the Stored Communications Act when it turned over to the city of Ontario texts sent and received by city employees who were users of the service.
On March 24, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy charged Kilpatrick and former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty with conspiracy, obstruction of justice, perjury and official misconduct in a case related to a whistle-blower trial last year.
Worthy’s investigation began after pager text messages published in January pointed to a sexual relationship between Kilpatrick and Beatty, and possible perjury about the nature of their relationship and circumstances surrounding the removal of Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown when they both testified in the civil case.
Other records released as a result of a lawsuit by The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press show Kilpatrick and Beatty signed a secret deal to keep the text messages under wraps as part of the city’s $8.4 million whistle-blower settlement.
