By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.Org. For the second time every week, lawyers for Waste Management on Tuesday halted a criminal proceeding after objecting to the court’s presence of a Florida Bulldog reporter. In November, Broward Chief Judge Jack Tuter dominated that the Davie recycling agency that’s suing Waste Management for $126 million in damages – Bergeron Environmental and Recycling – had furnished sufficient evidence to establish that Waste Management’s efforts to hide positive corporate records have been phony and that the trash giant may additionally have sought prison recommendation to perpetrate a criminal offense or fraud. Tuesday afternoon’s listening to before Tuter becomes to find the money for Waste Management, the risk of trying to refute that location, which, if it sticks, might shoot down Waste Management’s claim that the data should be protected from disclosure by using the legal professional-patron privilege. But matters unraveled quickly after the listening commenced. At the same time, Miami legal professional Frederick Fein, certainly one of about 10 Waste Management legal professionals from multiple law corporations, asked the courtroom to clean the court docket of “all non-parties” to prevent leakage of any facts contained in personal files that were going to be mentioned. “Who do you need to exclude, the Bulldog?” stated Tuter. “Yes,” stated Fein.
‘We want to be a gift.’ Still, Fort Lauderdale legal professional Chris Fertig, representing Florida Bulldog, told the judge that the hearing should be an “open and transparent” process for the public and the media. “We need to be present,” he said. “We want to look at what is going on with this judicial intent.”
Tuter appeared torn between some of the competing pastimes of Waste Management’s preference for confidentiality, Bergeron’s acquiescence to privacy, and a free press. Broward Chief Judge Jack Tuter Photo: J.A.A.B Blog “I am trying to balance all three pursuits,” Tuter said.
In the end, the hearing was referred to as off. Another hearing has been set for Wednesday, while the judge will evaluate positive Waste Management files in private to determine if they ought to be opened up for public inspection. He also ordered each facet and Florida Bulldog to document extra paperwork explaining their positions. The civil case file reflects that thousands of documents in the lawsuit continue to be exclusive. In courtroom Tuesday, Bergeron’s Fort Lauderdale legal professional, Mitchell Berger, stated that out of some 99,000 files Waste Management has produced for the protection to investigate handiest, approximately 300 had been now not marked exclusive – meaning approximately ninety-eight,seven-hundred documents regarding the organizations coping with nearby governments and federal and state antitrust regulators remain hidden from the public.
Big businesses like Waste Management generally impose confidentiality on litigants as the price for obtaining discovery of fundamental corporate facts without a fight that could drag on for months, or maybe years. Such an arrangement seems to have been in place in this example because rapidly after it rapidly commenced in 2016. However, Fertig mentioned that administrative rules do not allow the two sides to determine on their own what needs to be exclusive. The courtroom ought to make those selections – something that changed into now not performed previously in the case. ‘Crux of this example’ Judge Tuter has written that the “crux of this case centers at the legitimacy” of Waste Management’s $525 million acquisition of the belongings of Davie-based Southern Waste Systems in January 2016, a Justice Department antitrust evaluation of that deal and “voluminous discovery bearing on that evaluation.” The Florida Attorney General’s Office did a similar antitrust overview. Both allowed the merger to proceed.
SWS’s recycling department, Sun Recycling (now known as LGL Recycling), changed into a 50-50 partnership with Bergeron Environmental in Sun Bergeron, a joint venture that between 2013 and July 2018 processed many heaps of recycled trash for 17 Broward municipalities. Together, Sun Recycling and Bergeron Environmental – owned by outstanding Davie businessman Ron Bergeron – had damaged Waste Management’s long-time antique monopoly at the county’s solid-waste disposal commercial enterprise. But Waste Management’s SWS buy restored its control of the recycling stream, resulting in the main recycling charge increasing for nearby governments when their contracts with Sun Bergeron expired. Bergeron Environmental sued Waste Management and LGL, and several executives now not long after the SWS purchase. Bergeron contends the sale turned into a done at the back behind his back and that Waste Management misled Department of Justice antitrust regulators to win the approval of its takeover of SWS as part of a conspiracy to spoil its enterprise and steal its clients. The privileged documents look vital to the general public’s information on Waste Management’s acquisition of SWS and its effects on the opposition. One report that leaked out in late May because of a court clerk’s error created a stir among Sun Bergeron’s municipal clients.
It changed into a mystery, a two-page letter sent using then-Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office to Waste Management attorneys in December 2015. It confirmed that the nation OK’d the buyout only after being reassured by the corporation that the Broward clients might be allowed to resume their expiring contracts this 12 months for another five years at the same terms, conditions, and charges. Bondi’s workplace, however, in no way enforced that situation or even informed the city of its lifestyles. Last Thursday, attorneys for both sides had been scheduled to take the videotaped deposition of Broward County Administrator Bertha Henry. But the testimony within the County Attorney’s Office at County Hall became unexpectedly canceled when Waste Management’s attorneys walked out after additionally objecting to the presence of this reporter.