(Spirit Lake)– The Spirit Lake City Attorney’s Office today (Thurs.) released details of a lawsuit settlement between the city and former police officers Doug Ricke and Larry Moorhead.
The documents were made public after the parties involved in the matter consented to releasing them.
The suits named Mayor Eric Nielsen, former Police Chief Jon Martyr and the city as defendants. According to the documents, Ricke’s settlement was 440-thousand dollars and Moorhead received 175-thousand. In exchange, all claims filed by both the plaintiffs and defendants were dropped.
The documents don’t say how much each plaintiff was seeking.
Of the money that was awarded, the city paid 2,500-dollars toward each claim. The remainder was covered by the Iowa Communities Assurance Pool, or ICAP, which negotiated the agreements. According to Assistant City Attorney Gregg Owens, neither the city council, Mayor nor the City Attorney was involved in determining the amount of the settlement. Owens adds the settlement was never presented to the city by ICAP for approval.
City officials have come under fire for not releasing the settlement details until now. Owens sites an Iowa Attorney General’s Sunshine Advisory from October of 2004 that says even if records are public records, “their release may be enjoined under certain circumstances”.
Owens adds there was a possibility of the plaintiffs suing the city again if it had released the settlements without their consent.
Ricke and Moorhead sued the city in separate cases in U-S District Court in Sioux City in 2002 claiming they were victims of retaliation and were wrongfully terminated or demoted.
