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County settles coroner lawsuit with Glasgow school district

County paid district more than $77k Cost to taxpayers eclipses $139k

Posted 3/2/22

The nearly five-year legal saga between the Glasgow school district and the office of the Howard County Coroner has reportedly been settled. A payment in the amount of $77,294.49 was sent from the …

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County settles coroner lawsuit with Glasgow school district

County paid district more than $77k Cost to taxpayers eclipses $139k

Posted

The nearly five-year legal saga between the Glasgow school district and the office of the Howard County Coroner has reportedly been settled. A payment in the amount of $77,294.49 was sent from the Howard County Clerk’s office to the school district in January. However, no settlement has been filed with the court. On Monday, Circuit 14 Presiding Judge Scott Hayes set the next court date for March 14 should the case remain officially open by then.

Howard County commissioners voted 3-0 on Tuesday, January 25, to abandon any further appeals and settle the lawsuit once and for all. 

The suit was filed in March 2017 when then-coroner Frank Flaspohler refused to turn over a transcript of a public coroner’s inquest held in January 2017. The inquest was held to determine factors that lead to the December 2016 suicide of rural Glasgow teenager Kenneth Suttner. The school district was cited several times during the inquest.

By settling the case, the county has agreed to pay the Glasgow school district $77,294.49 to cover attorney’s fees racked up by the district in its efforts to obtain the transcript. It is the final matter to be settled between the two entities, following three judgments from  Judge Hayes, and two attempts by Richard B. Hicks, the attorney for the coroner, to appeal those rulings before the Western District Court of Appeals.

In September of last year, the appeals court ruled on nearly all aspects of the case except for the final awarding of attorneys fees to the school district. Judge Hayes was tasked by the appeals court to make the final ruling on the fees.

As was reported in the September 29, 2021 Fayette Advertiser, the appeals court largely sided with the Glasgow School District in its 2017 lawsuit against the office of the Howard County Coroner. The decision upheld Judge Hayes’s July 2020 ruling that then-Howard County Coroner Frank Flaspohler willingly violated the Missouri Sunshine Law when he denied access to records of the public inquest to the school district.

Judge Hayes’s ruling in 2020 awarded attorneys fees in the amount of $73,250.50 to the school district. But 14 months later, the appeals court ruled that $19,965 of those fees were accrued by the district while its council sought certain exhibits from the inquest. The coroner’s office was not the custodian of those records, and therefore fees resulting from attempts to gain such records could not be charged to the coroner. The appeals court, in its opinion, stated that attorneys’ fees should only be awarded for the time the district spent seeking the transcript.

A settlement was not reached the last time the two sides met in court on December 13, 2021. Current Howard County Coroner Trisha Clark, who defeated Flaspohler in the election held in November 2020, told this newspaper she did not intend to further appeal the case. All three Howard County commissioners voted in January to settle the case. The taxpayers of Howard County and the Glasgow School District are ultimately responsible for all attorneys’ fees. As of Tuesday, March 1, the cost to defend the office of the coroner has totaled $62,056.26. The grand total charged to the taxpayers, including attorneys fees awarded to the Glasgow district, has now exceeded $139,000.

Western District Commissioner Mat Freese told this newspaper in January that the previous commission had budgeted for the payout in the event the appeal was not successful. “It’s a no-win situation for the taxpayers,” he said.

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