FINAL DETAILS OF SETTLEMENT FALL TOGETHER

18 More Counties Announce Agreements In Tulia Lawsuit

The final pieces of the $6 million Tulia settlement puzzle fell into place
friday.

Representatives for Texas Association of Counties announced the details of
their 17-county, $560,000 settlement, while an attorney for Childress
County revealed his client would pay $50,000 to settle the suit.

The settlement negotiations have been ongoing for a month as 30
municipalities and counties named in the federal lawsuit worked out terms
that would allow them to avoid a potentially long, costly trial.

The suit was filed on behalf of two defendants from the controversial 1999
Tulia drug sting, in which 46 people were arrested, 39 of them black.
Nearly all of the defendants were eventually pardoned and released.

Amarillo will pay the biggest part of the settlement - which covers all the
people arrested in the bust - having agreed last month to shut down the
drug task force that ran the operation and to pay $5 million.

The rest of the cities and counties have been working on how to divide the
remaining $1 million payment agreed to by attorneys on both sides.

Texas Association of Counties negotiated on behalf of 17 counties that are
members of TAC's risk management pool.

Deborah Bonner, who is representing TAC as a senior claims counsel with
Dallas-based Professional Claims Management, released the terms of that
settlement Friday after getting approval from all the county commissions.

TAC will pay $80,000 on behalf of Swisher County and will pay $30,000
apiece for the other 16 counties, Bonner said.

"A big factor in every case we have is the cost of defense," Bonner said.
"In this case, especially, we were estimating close to $2 million to defend
it, so the $560,000 settlement was a savings."

Bonner said one important note is that the settlement contains no admission
of wrongdoing on behalf of the counties, which avoids setting a precedent
that could result in further litigation.

Also Friday, an attorney for Childress County said that county would be
paying $50,000 for its share of the settlement.

Lubbock lawyer Richard Hubbert originally refused to say what Childress
County's insurer would be paying on behalf of the county, but he released
the information when the Globe-News submitted a public information request
to the county.

The Childress information leaves one piece of the puzzle missing, but a
little deduction can fill in that blank.

Parmer County originally was thought to be one of the 17 TAC counties,
while Castro County was excluded from the list because it wasn't a member
of the task force until after the bust, and therefore, wouldn't be paying
anything.

Bonner said on Friday that TAC would be paying $30,000 on behalf of Castro
County anyway, but Parmer County was never part of the TAC settlement.

Parmer County officials said they did not know how much their insurer would
be paying, but the totals from the other counties leave $50,000 for Parmer
County to pay to complete the $1 million settlement.