Judge tentatively sides with Newport in suit alleging illegal secret meetings over city manager’s exit but allows amendment to complaint

An Orange County Superior Court judge has tentatively sided with Newport Beach in a lawsuit by a resident demanding that a court-appointed special prosecutor investigate allegations that four City Council members secretly conspired to oust City Manager Dave Kiff.

The resident, Chuck Groux, was given two weeks to amend his complaint. But Judge Craig Griffin noted that Groux previously tried to update his complaint by dropping some defendants and seeking a lighter judgment, making it appear the city’s defense has “at least some merit.”

In his first attempt at amending his complaint, Groux sought to drop the city and City Attorney Aaron Harp as defendants, leaving Mayor Marshall “Duffy” Duffield, Mayor Pro Tem Will O’Neill and Councilmen Scott Peotter and Kevin Muldoon. He also sought to scuttle his request for a special prosecutor and ask only for declaratory judgment, a simple declaration that illegal secret meetings took place.

The court rejected that amendment attempt because it missed the filing deadline. But Groux will be allowed to try again.

His attorney, Phil Greer, did not return messages seeking comment this week.

The call for a special prosecutor used arguments about Harp that were similar to those in a separate, since-abandoned complaint that Greer filed in April on behalf of resident Martha Peyton, who claimed that Peotter and Duffield broke several state and local campaign finance rules.

Peyton dropped that case in July after a separate judge tentatively ruled the city had no mandatory obligation to declare a conflict of interest between the council and Harp, who serves at the council’s discretion.

In a filing asking for the opportunity to amend Groux’s suit, Greer said he and Groux sought to drop Harp as a defendant “assuming that we were going to get the same result.”

Harp declined to comment.

Initially, Groux’s lawsuit alleged that Duffield, O’Neill, Peotter and Muldoon violated the Brown Act, the state open-meetings law, by meeting secretly to plot Kiff’s firing and that Harp was either complicit or derelict in allowing the meetings to occur.

The four accused council members have denied the allegations, as has Kiff.

The complaint also claimed the city “publicly admitted” that it violated the open-meetings law ahead of a unanimous council vote in April to amend Kiff’s contract to allow it to end this month, eight months before the previously scheduled expiration. The city issued a formal “commitment letter” promising not to violate the law but also emphasized that such surreptitious meetings never took place.

The city’s outside attorneys argued that the commitment letter negates Groux’s claim.

“That appears to be correct,” Griffin wrote, “as the claims are directed entirely to past conduct, and the city provided an unconditional commitment related thereto.”

Kiff’s last day on the job is Aug. 31. Irvine Assistant City Manager Grace Leung is set to replace him.

hillary.davis@latimes.com

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