MFP: Crying All The Way To The Bank

Aren't we lucky in Windsor? We "saved" over $150 million in the MFP matter by settling. Unfortunately City Hall keeps forgetting to tell us that it cost us an extra $68 million!

Frankly, the settlement probably makes sense. If you read the KPMG Report, it makes the City look very foolish with lack of controls or failure to follow them.

In Toronto, the Bellamy report resulted in a settlement with MFP. A rep from MFP stated:

• "It certainly is a better settlement than we had three years ago." "We get more money up front, we get 15 per cent interest on the original settlement, we get more than $1.25 million for a purchase option, it's a good deal for us."

I wonder what MFP would say about Windsor where instead of the low rate supposedly negotiated, they received "conventional" rates, whatever those are. It's probably a pretty good deal for them here too.

The Toronto case settled because "The city's legal opinion said Bellamy's report severely damaged its case. The opinion said the city has an 80 per cent chance of losing in court, and losing would likely cost the city more than $20 million." The result made it virtually impossible for the city to win. I expect that Windsor's legal opinion probably said something similar and that is why Windsor settled. ["The report was released in error and it would be unfair for anyone to benefit from that error," said lawyer Cliff Sutts, who represented the city in the fight to keep the report secret..."it would be extremely prejudicial to our case if it was widely circulated."]

However, there was a big difference between Toronto and Windsor: The Bellamy Inquiry was held in public for the world to see while the KPMG Report was prepared in private and was supposedly confidential for the use of City lawyers for litigation.

Because of certain actions being taken, and we still do NOT know exactly how it happened, the KPMG Report lost its status as a "privileged" document and became public. Effectively the KPMG Report gave MFP its settlement by revealing all of the City's dirty linen. It cost Windsor an extra $68 million.

I asked before and I ask again why the City has not considered legal action against those responsible for allowing the KPMG Report to become public.

I asked before and I ask again why the City has not considered legal action to recover all or part of our $68 million loss.

Why?