Newport resident asks for his open-meetings lawsuit against the city to be dismissed

A Newport Beach resident is asking an Orange County Superior Court judge to dismiss his lawsuit against the city that alleged a contingent of City Council members met secretly to plot the ouster of the city manager.

Chuck Groux filed a request for dismissal with prejudice, meaning the case couldn’t be refiled. The request came after Judge Craig Griffin tentatively sided with the city.

Groux claimed that Mayor Marshall “Duffy” Duffield, Mayor Pro Tem Will O’Neill and Councilmen Scott Peotter and Kevin Muldoon violated the Brown Act, the state open-meetings law, by meeting surreptitiously to plot Dave Kiff’s “firing.” He also sought a court-appointed special prosecutor to investigate the matter, arguing that City Attorney Aaron Harp was either complicit or derelict in allowing the alleged meetings to occur.

An earlier complaint by another resident, filed directly with the city, also accused the four council members of maneuvering to push Kiff out eight months before his contract’s previously scheduled expiration. Kiff’s last day on the job was Friday.

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

However, the city issued a formal “commitment letter” after the earlier complaint promising not to violate the law while emphasizing that the surreptitious meetings never took place.

The city’s outside attorneys argued that the commitment letter negated Groux’s claim, and in a tentative ruling in August, Griffin agreed.

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