Trial of Suit Challenging Seating of Irvine Councilman Set Jan. 29

After a series of delays, a lawsuit challenging City Councilman Cameron Cosgrove’s right to serve on the City Council is scheduled to go to trial Jan. 29 in Orange County Superior Court.

The suit, filed in February by Irvine residents Howard Klein and Christina Bustos-Thomas, contends that Cosgrove was seated illegally after the June, 1988, City Council race to fill two vacant seats. Cosgrove placed third in the election, after Paula Werner and Sally Anne Sheridan, but he took a seat when Larry Agran was elected from the City Council to the post of mayor in the same election.

The nearly 12 months of legal jousting has become, Agran said, “rather nasty.”

The council is tentatively scheduled to discuss the possibility of a civil rights lawsuit by Cosgrove against Klein and Bustos-Thomas, and the role the that council might play in such an action, at its meeting next Tuesday.

Klein and Bustos-Thomas say that Measure D, a City Charter amendment that passed in the same election, gives them the right to challenge the seating of the council member, who came in third. But the lawsuit centers on the question of when Measure D went into effect before or after Cosgrove was seated in July, 1988.

Measure D states that if a council member is elected mayor, the top unseated vote-getter for the council will succeed to the vacant seat. It also, however, allows Irvine residents to call a special election to fill the vacated seat if a petition signed by 7% of the registered voters is filed by July 15.

In July, 1988, a group of Irvine residents collected 4,100 signatures, 600 more than required by the measure. The residents asked for the special election and filed the petition before the deadline.

But part of the complexity of the case is based on when each of the council members was sworn in. Agran was sworn in July 13, 1988, according to City Clerk Nancy Lacey, a fact that Agran said puts Cosgrove on the council as of that date.

“The public swearing-in is strictly ceremonial,” Agran said. “The fact of the matter is that we were all sworn in at different times. But once I was sworn in, one vacancy was created and Cameron Cosgrove’s filling of that seat was automatic.”