MEA must repay attorney

PALMER -- Palmer Superior Court Judge Beverly Cutler, Tuesday, declared Scott Waterman a public interest litigant and ordered Matanuska Electric Association to pay $100,000 in attorney fees.

"We're jumping for joy, although in the pit of my stomach, it's once again, spending consumer money on a frivolous lawsuit," said MEA board member Michael Janecek Wednesday after learning of the decision.

The lawsuit stems from MEA's 2001 board of directors election, in which Janecek won a seat on the MEA board. At the board's April 30, 2001, meeting, board members decided 5-2 not to seat Janecek, claiming his campaign disclosures were inaccurate and did not demonstrate a good faith effort to comply with MEA bylaws. Shortly after the decision, Scott Waterman, a member-owner of MEA and would-be constituent of Janecek's, filed a complaint and subsequent request for a restraining order and injunctive relief against the decision.

Cutler found in February that Janecek should have been seated and ordered MEA to do so. He was seated at MEA's March 11 meeting.

After a review of a request for status as a public interest litigant by Ingaldson Maassen, the law firm representing Waterman in the case, Cutler agreed that Waterman fits the bill and should be awarded attorney fees.

The case, Cutler wrote, was directly related to public policy and the majority of voters who voted in the election stood to benefit if Janecek won the seat. Cutler's decision stated that Waterman was a public interest litigant, because only a private party could legally bring a suit against MEA in a case similar to Waterman's and Waterman had no economic incentive to file the suit.

In response to an MEA memo that they, too, should be eligible for public interest litigant status and therefore, should not have to pay Waterman's court costs, Cutler disagreed.

"MEA clearly does not meet the test for being accorded status as a public interest litigant," Cutler wrote. "MEA neither brought suit to effectuate strong public policies nor constitutes a private individual bringing an action because no one else had sufficient economic incentive to do so."

Cutler also denied an MEA motion requesting the ability to conduct further discovery pertinent to Waterman's claim to be a public interest litigant.

The $100,000 is less than the cost of attorney fees requested by Ingaldson Maassen, but Cutler declared it a fair number.

"The court is aware that [the] plaintiff already had diminished his fee request from a potential claim of $124,683 to $112,214, but … [the] plaintiff should have been able to fully state his case to the court … for $100,000."

Mary Pinkel, an Ingaldson Maassen attorney in the case, said the firm found the figure satisfactory.

"We're just really happy with the court's decision -- because we think it was the correct decision," Pinkel said. "It shows that if you really do try hard, the justice system can work for people who do the right thing."

MEA spokesman Mike Pauley had not yet read the judge's decision before Frontiersman went to press, and he did not want to comment until he had a more thorough understanding of that decision.