Battleswarm was doing a better job of covering the red-light camera issue in Houston than I was. However, I ran across an item (by way of Overlawyered) that I thought was worth sharing.
When the referendum outlawing the red light cameras was being litigated before District Court Judge Lynn N. Hughes, Judge Hughes blocked Francis and Randy Kubosh, the people behind the referendum, from participating in Houston’s lawsuit against American Traffic Solutions (ATS). The Kuboshs (and other people) were concerned that Houston was going to go into the tank for ATS, “especially after ATS and Houston’s lawyers sat together at the same table during oral arguments.”
Yeah. Well. The Fifth Circuit ruled on Tuesday that, no, Judge Hughes, you can’t do that.
“There is no federal authority nor state law prohibiting intervention of right in this type of case,” Chief Judge Edith H. Jones wrote for the appellate panel. “These intervenors are unique because they engineered the drive that led to a city charter amendment over the nearly unanimous, well funded, and longstanding opposition of the mayor and city council… They have raised substantial doubts about the city’s motives and conduct in its defense of the litigation with ATS. Without these intervenors’ participation, the city might well be inclined to settle the litigation on terms that preserve the adverse ruling on the charter amendment and thus preserve its flexibility to reinstate red light cameras in the future. This is no matter of simply defending city policy of one sort or another: it involves millions of dollars of revenue to city coffers during a period of considerable economic uncertainty.”
Meanwhile, the city settled with ATS for $4.8 million. Noted:
Hughes has close ties with ATS, having served on the bench for 25 years with Judge David Hittner, the father of ATS General Counsel George Hittner.
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 26th, 2012 at 10:31 am and is filed under Clippings, Law, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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