Bibb County can amend multimillion-dollar lawsuit, add defendants, judge rules

A federal judge on Monday granted a Bibb County school district motion to amend its multimillion-dollar lawsuit over alleged fraudulent technology purchases.

That ruling would allows the district to add, among others, the former chairman of the Bibb County Industrial Authority, Cliffard Whitby, as a defendant.

A motion requesting the amendment was filed in early October, and it added new allegations of money laundering and misconduct pertaining to the Macon Promise Neighborhood initiative. The district said it sought to amend its complaint based largely on recent criminal indictments.

It also says that defendants, as recently as May 2017, took steps to create software that could be passed off as the system for which the school district paid $3.2 million in 2012.

Defendants in the case had maintained that the motion should be denied because the school district had delayed such a move without adequate justification. Attorneys maintained that lawyers for the school district already knew about the additional parties’ alleged involvement in the case for a while.

In his decision granting the amendment, U.S. District Judge Marc T. Treadwell noted that the school district “shall file the amended complaint and immediately personally serve the new defendants. Current defendants shall file responsive pleadings within 14 days.”

This story was originally published November 20, 2017 at 5:03 PM with the headline "Bibb County can amend multimillion-dollar lawsuit, add defendants, judge rules."