Residents dramatize lawsuit vs. engineers

February 6, 2001

Christie Caliendo
TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

PORT ST. LUCIE Four residents who are defendants in a lawsuit with a bridge builder are trying to dramatize their situation this morning by renting a Ryder truck with police escorts and taking a posse in tow to deliver boxes of documents to an attorney’s office in Vero Beach.

Saying they were mirroring the recent delivery of ballots from Palm Beach County to Tallahassee, four opponents of the proposed Walton Road Bridge delivered thousands of documents demanded during the discovery phase of the suit. The four are being sued for slander, libel and conspiracy to defame Figg Bridge Engineers, consultants for the controversial bridge project.

"(The defendants) are trying, in a flip way, to dramatize the absurdity of what they have to do during the discovery phase," said Robert Rivas, an attorney who represents the four.

"They are being punished to have to gather their papers for Figg as if they’re radioactive. It’s ridiculous. They have to hand over thousands of their own documents so that Figg can paw through them," he said. "As if it’s any of Figg’s business."

Today’s turnover of documents is the latest development in a suit Figg filed in September against Ed McKay, Kevin Stinnette, Charles Grande and Roger Sharp, who have been opponents of a toll bridge at Walton Road over the Indian River Lagoon.

The suit centers around statements made by the opponents during several meetings and letters to the editor, where allegedly the four men connected Figg with an investigation that involved a construction company the firm oversaw.

According to the allegations, the construction company illegally dumped tons of concrete and debris into Pensacola Bay when the Garcon Point Bridge in the Panhandle was being built.

Figg said the four residents, who describe themselves as "the St. Lucie Four," were libeling, slandering and defaming the firm in order to derail the $50 million bridge project.

Harold Melville, attorney for Figg, laughed when he heard of the Ryder truck episode planned for this morning.

"That is interesting, but I have no comment," he said.

Stinnette said attorneys for Figg have requested every document the four men have in connection with the bridge project, which adds up to "easily more than thousands."

"If the law says we have to give them everything, we’ll give them everything," Stinnette said. "I’m not Ollie North, and I don’t have a shredder."

And why the police escort?

"If these documents are so important to Figg, we want to do everything in our power to safeguard them and get them to Vero safely," Stinnette said. "It’s such an absurd thing for them to be suing us at all."

An attempt was made at one point to settle the suit out of court. Figg requested an apology from the St. Lucie Four and a retraction of the comments made, attorneys said.

But the opponents said that they would not apologize because they had not done anything wrong and the suit was just an attempt to stifle any opposition to the Walton Road Bridge project.

"This lawsuit has successfully silenced some environmentalists, and people have not written letters to the editor because they are afraid they will be sued," Stinnette said. "It is completely an effort to stifle opposition and it makes my blood boil."

Rivas said that he is hoping to schedule a hearing for this summer, when he will ask a judge to dismiss the suit.

"We would love to settle this out of court if we still could, but there has been no progress in settlement discussion," Melville said. "They said they don’t plan on apologizing."