Salt Lake County Attorney Doug Short has entered into peace talks with the County Commission's new lawyer after two court losses Tuesday.
Within five minutes of being hired by the commission, private attorney Randy Dryer was on the phone to Short.The county attorney later rushed out of the State Capitol after a Supreme Court hearing Tuesday afternoon to meet with Dryer.
The two men conversed for more than an hour. "I think with Randy Dryer, there is a possibility of something being worked out," Short said Wednesday.
Short asked the County Commission Wednesday to let him hire his own attorney to defend himself against the commission's lawsuit.
The commission vote unanimously against counsel for Short. It was reasonable for the commission to hire two private attorneys because they don't have their own legal counsel, said Commissioner Randy Horiuchi. But the county attorney has "a staff squadron of several attorneys."
"We are swamped at our office. We have $25 million worth of pending litigation. I can't pull attorneys of that to defend this," Short told the Deseret News. He praised the commission for hiring Dryer, whom he said would be easier to work with. "Randy Dryer doesn't have the baggage that Pat Shea does."
Short adds that if the commission is sincere about working out problems with him, it will let him hire his own counsel as well.
The commission hired Shea to represent it last spring after Short threatened to sue the commission over a $75,000 grant it wanted to give to Taylorsville-Bennion officials.
Short later sued Shea instead.
Third District Judge Pat Brian Tuesday dismissed that lawsuit but urged Short and the commission to resolve their differences for the sake of the public.
The litigation could "well develop its own respiratory system and go on and on," 3rd District Judge Pat Brian said. He urged everyone to talk out his problems rationally.
Short had sued Shea because he believed the county improperly hired Shea in a closed meeting that may have violated the state's open meetings act.
Later that day, the Utah Supreme Court refused to lift a temporary restraining order the commission obtained against Short last week.
Short was surprised by his loss in Brian's court but said he expected to lose at the Supreme Court. "It was a long shot at best."
Meanwhile, the commission held a hasty meeting Tuesday between the two court hearings to hire Dryer. Shea had hired Dryer as his personal attorney last week after his previous attorney, Elizabeth King, left his office to take a job with the Utah Attorney General's office. Her new employer didn't want her involved in the fight between Shea and Short.
After Shea hired Dryer, he urged the commission to hire him as well to assist with the county's suit against Short.
"There are only two attorneys in our office. With the volume of litigation we expect to come out of this, we do need some assistance," attorney Chris Decker told the commission.
Decker is the other attorney in Shea's office.
The commission unanimously voiced its intention to hire Dryer, effective immediately. However, the commission will formally hire Dryer at a later meeting because Short's office suggested the commission may again be violating the state's open meetings law by failing to give a full 24-hour notice of Tuesday's meeting.
Brian touched on the Open Meetings Act in his ruling Tuesday morning. He acknowledged that the commission may have "technically" violated the act when it failed to give a public notice of the closed-door meeting where commissioners voted to hire Shea.
But he dismissed Short's suit because Short sued the wrong party. He should have sued the commission, not Shea. The Open Meetings Act regulates public bodies, not private individuals, Brian ruled.
The judge also said he was probably going to require Short or the county to pay Shea for the money he spent defending himself in the suit. Shea's attorney's fees will exceed $8,000, according to an affidavit filed with the court.
Shea asked Brian to sanction Short - which could mean imposing a fine beyond attorneys' fees - for filing what Shea believed was a frivolous lawsuit against him.
Short sued Shea because he knew he would be publicly criticized for suing the commission, Dryer argued on Shea's behalf. Brian scheduled a hearing Sept. 30 to consider attorneys' fees and Shea's request for sanctions.
Later that day, the Utah Supreme Court refused to lift a temporary restraining order the commissioners had obtained against Short. The restraining order prohibits Short from doing any civil investigation into the Hansen Planetarium without getting permission from District Attorney Neal Gunnarson.
The restraining order improperly transferred the powers of the county attorney to the district attorney, Short told the high court. "We can't do anything, even in our own area, without Mr. Gunnarson's permission."
Justice Richard Howe was troubled by the breadth of the order.
The County Commission persuaded 3rd District Court Judge Robert Hilder to expand the order last week because Short contacted a county security guard involved in the investigation at the planetarium, Shea explained.
Shea believed that contact was in violation of the court's previous restraining order forbidding Short to conduct a criminal investigation at the planetarium.
"The court felt its ruling had been deliberately disregarded by Mr. Short," so Hilder broadened the restraining order last week, Shea said.
But then Shea shifted to the commission's suit against Short, which was filed in Hilder's court hours before the commission got a restraining order.
The security guard is a potential witness in that lawsuit, Shea told the justices. Short shouldn't be contacting one of the commission's potential witnesses.
Short, too, used the lawsuit to argue his cause. The restraining order is so broad he can't even interview the people he needs to to defend himself from the lawsuit, he argued.
But the justices concluded that Short didn't meet the legal burden required in filing a petition for writ of extraordinary relief. Less than an hour after recessing, the court issued a one-sentence ruling denying Short's motion.