Mayor Taylor and the City have filed a declaratory judgment action "against" BOK seeking to have the settlement agreement with BOK in which the City paid off the GPA debt declared valid. This has become a common response to a qui tam demand by taxpayers.
I understand the taxpayers were made parties to the dec action to assure that the legality of the settlement would be fully contested. It would be very hard for them to later prevail on their qui tam claims if they were given the opportunity to show that the settlement was not valid in the dec action. The below case (and cases cited therein) seems to hold that their qui tam claims may be premature (or non existent) as filing the dec action is considered an appropriate response to a taxpayer demand letter as long as the dec action is really contested.
If in the dec action the settlement is declared invalid all that happens is BOK pays back the City (with interest)--no taxpayer claims--no personal liability for the mayor--no treble damages from her to the taxpayers--no attorneys fees for the taxpayers attorneys. If the City and Mayor win the dec action then no taxpayer qui tam liability and the taxpayers and their attorneys get nothing. Sort of a lose-lose for the individual taxpayers--but in theory a win-win for the citizens of Tulsa--we either get the money back from BOK or we have a court saying it was paid legally.
The other winners are the private attorneys hired by the City and the Mayor and the BOK attorneys who are getting paid too. The citizens of Tulsa and stockholders of BOK are losing some litigation expense over this suit, but they would argue this was caused by the taxpayers demand.
I expect the taxpayers and their attorneys are trying to show that the dec action is a sham and not in good faith and should be dismissed and their qui tam counterclaims/cross claims allowed to go forward-against the Mayor personally and BOK with the taxpayers claiming to represent the City of Tulsa in recovering the alleged improperly paid funds--and of course treble damages and attorneys fees as a reward for them.
See: STATE ex rel. WRIGHT v. OKLAHOMA CORPORATION COMMISSION, 2007 OK 73, 170 P.3d 1024
http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/deliverdocument.asp?id=450993&hits="37 The Tal opinions indicate that when a public body receives the written demand letter, one of the appropriate responses may be to bring a declaratory judgment proceeding to adjudicate the legality of the issues raised by the demand letter. The declaratory judgment proceeding may be deemed, as a matter of law, to be an appropriate response because officials are entitled to the presumption that their action in seeking declaratory judgment is in good faith. State ex rel. Moshe Tal. v. City of Oklahoma City, 2000 OK 70, ¶ 4, 19 P.3d 268, 271, cert. denied , 534 U.S. 814, 122 S.Ct. 40, 151 L.Ed.2d 13 (2001). In State, Bd. Com'rs Pontotoc County ex rel. Braly v. Ford, supra, one of the issues was the diligence of the officials in bringing an action after receiving a demand letter. Braly, 116 P.2d at 990 - 992. A recurring issue in the Tal opinions is similar, but not identical; i.e., the diligence of the officials' representation of the alleged illegal official acts in the declaratory judgment proceeding. In the Tal cases, the taxpayers failed to show that the facts material to the legality of the issues were not presented to the trial court for it to consider when adjudicating the merits of the claimed legality or illegality. Tal I and Tal II, supra. For additional example, we specifically noted in Tal IV that the taxpayers failed to assert that the public body failed to raise any substantive issue arising from the allegations of the taxpayers' written demand upon the public body that related to the lawfulness of the challenged acts of the public body. Tal IV, 2002 OK 97, at ¶ 8, 61 P.3d 234, at 241."
