The dismissal ends a legal fight over one of Dallas’ biggest civic questions: whether to spend hundreds of millions repairing the nearly 50-year-old I.M. Pei-designed City Hall or move city operations and redevelop the 12-acre downtown site.
Council members Paula Blackmon and Adam Bazaldua filed a notice July 2 voluntarily dismissing their claims against the city, City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert and City Secretary Bilierae Johnson, Dallas County court records show. State District Judge Eric Moyé dismissed the case four days later.
“We certainly don’t want to waste the city’s resources or anyone else’s in continuing litigation when there’s nothing left to fight about,” attorney John Adams, who represented Blackmon and Bazaldua, said Tuesday.
Blackmon and Bazaldua confirmed by text to The Dallas Morning News that Adams accurately characterized why they dismissed the case. It wasn’t clear Tuesday how much the litigation cost the city or how Blackmon and Bazaldua’s legal fees were billed.
Bazaldua said the council members were represented by outside counsel already retained by the city, but he didn’t know how much the litigation cost or how the legal fees were handled. A city spokeswoman declined to comment.
Blackmon and Bazaldua filed the lawsuit June 8 with fellow council member Cara Mendelsohn, who later withdrew, challenging the agenda for a June 10 specially called council meeting on City Hall’s future.
The original agenda asked the council to advance relocation planning for City Hall and emergency operations, begin a phased repair program and authorize Tolbert to pursue redevelopment of the current site.
Moyé issued a temporary restraining order June 9 after concluding several relocation and redevelopment agenda items didn’t give adequate public notice under the Texas Open Meetings Act.