Behind-the-scenes summit underway to settle multimillion-dollar Bibb schools lawsuit
By 7:30 on a bone-chilling morning in downtown Macon, a stream of attorneys and their clients had already begun trickling in for a high-stakes meeting to try to settle a lawsuit filed by Bibb County’s school district.
The school system is trying to recover roughly $9 million that it claims it is due from tech companies and others in now-contentious business dealings.
The private mediation gathering at a Mulberry Street law office that sits across Third Street from the school system’s headquarters and the federal courthouse is aimed at reaching an agreement, in part, in a complex case that centers on allegedly fraudulent technology purchases and other matters.
The talks continued into Thursday night.
Among those named in the school system's suit are: former Macon-Bibb County Industrial Authority Chairman Cliffard Whitby, former school Superintendent Romain Dallemand; Florida attorney Harold Knowles and Macon businessman Dave Carty; Progressive Property Management LLC; the Central Georgia Partnership for Individual and Community Development; Positiventures Initiative; Whitby Inc.; Integrated Technologies Consulting; and the Florida-based Knowles and Randolph P.A. law firm, for which Knowles is a managing partner; Dave Carty’s business partner, Isaac Culver; Culver and Carty’s company, Progressive Consulting Technologies Inc.; Comptech Computer Technologies Inc. and its president and CEO, Allen J. Stephen; Pinnacle/CSG Inc. and its president, Cory McFarlane. Whitby created Whitby Inc., Central Georgia Partnership and Positiventures. He also formed Integrated along with his brother-in-law, Tyrone Lewis.
The case also involves allegations of money laundering and misconduct pertaining to the Macon Promise Neighborhood initiative.
It also says that some of the 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.
The school district alleges that it paid the money for Proscenium software it never received and that the district contends the Tallahassee, Florida, construction company didn’t have the capability to produce.
Also on Thursday, in a court filing connected to the case, Pinnacle and its CEO, McFarlane, filed a $50 million counterclaim against the Bibb school system and against the system’s current superintendent, along with several past and present school board members, citing racial discrimination.
Pinnacle, a minority-owned, Tallahassee-based company, and McFarlane, described in the suit as the firm’s “chief visionary,” contend that the Bibb school district and its officials denied the company of rights “enjoyed by white citizens and companies,” including the ability “to make, perform, modify, and terminate contracts, and to enjoy all benefits, privileges, terms, and conditions of the contractual relationship, based on their race.”
The countersuit also claims:
“There was no legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for (the school system and its representatives') different treatment of (Pinnacle and McFarlane), from the way it treated other similarly situated white companies. …
“(The district and its representatives) engaged in an intentional pattern and practice of behavior designed to harm (Pinnacle and McFarlane) because it was a minority contractor. … As a direct, foreseeable, and proximate result of said wrongful acts … “(Pinnacle and McFarlane) suffered and will continue to suffer damages that include, but are not limited to, harm to its name and reputation, the loss of integrity and good will, the loss of its bonding capacity, lost contracts (in the amount of $49,700,000), lost profits (well in excess of $5,900,000), … and other compensatory damages to be proven at trial.”
This story was originally published January 18, 2018 at 11:21 AM with the headline "Behind-the-scenes summit underway to settle multimillion-dollar Bibb schools lawsuit."