Judge: City Must Pay Attorney's Fees to Firm

Judge: City must pay attorney's fees to firm

By MARIANNE RZEPKA

NEWS STAFF REPORTER 

A ruling in Washtenaw County Circuit Court has ended one of the many disputes between Pall-Gelman Sciences Inc, and the city of Ann Arbor!

Judge Donald E. Shelton held last week that Ann Arbor owed the Scio Township company $1,740 in attorney fees for a lawsuit that Pall-Gelman brought to get documents from the city under the state’s Freedom of Information Act. The city has until April 27 to make the payment. Pall-Gelman had asked for reimbursement of $12,000.

However, Shelton ruled the company should have used the court’s discovery process to get the documents, which had to do with the amount of 1,4-dioxane leaking from the closed city landfill into the wastewater treatment system and finally into the Huron River. If the discovery process had been used, the cost to the company would have equaled the lower amount, the judge said.

Pall-Gelman and the city have been entangled in an ongoing dispute over the cleanup of groundwater contamination around the company’s plant, just west of the city limits. Pall-Gelman sought the documents to show the city also is putting polluted water into the sewer system.

The city already has made the documents available, said Richard Connor. Pall-Gelman attorney. There still are a few pieces of information the company has not seen, he said, but the city could make them available.

The judge’s ruling “really resolves the (Freedom of Information) case,” Connor said.

However, several court issues "still “are unresolved irTthe company’s clean-up of groundwater contaminated with 1,4-dioxane, a suspected carcinogen.

Under another order from Shelton, Pall-Gelman has until Wednesday to file a request for a permit to dispose of treated groundwater from a new pump in the Allison-Evergreen neighborhood on Ann Arbor’s west side.

The company and the city also must meet with a court mediator to work out other issues having to do with the new pumping system in the Allison-Evergreen area.

This week, Scio Township and the Washtenaw County Road Commission are in court to ask Pall-Gelman to pay part of the cost of reviewing the proposed Allison-Evergreen area cleanup work, which will cross into township and county rights of way.