Cook, Brown and City of El Paso cases may now head to trial

No final decisions from a hearing Tuesday about former El Paso Mayor John Cook’s suit against Word of Life Church leader Tom Brown. Judge Javier Alvarez of County Court at Law #3 put the biggest decision off for several more weeks.

Cook is suing Brown for legal fees totaling in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, stemming from the recall effort Brown led against him. That effort itself was in response to a city council vote to extend benefits to domestic partners of city employees, regardless of gender.

Brown’s attorneys were asking the judge to effectively dismiss that suit Tuesday. The judge declined to do that, but will wait until both sides have answered some of his questions to decide if the case will proceed to trial overall.

Brown is also suing the city of El Paso, alleging civil rights violations. An attorney for the city wanted that suit thrown out, and the judge denied that motion as well.

After the hearing, Cook’s attorney declined to speak about the results, but Brown’s counsel said the case goes much deeper than legal fees.

“I hope that people pay attention to this case,” said Jerad Najvar, representing Brown. “Its important, because what you have is an elected official who’s trying to collect a million dollars in attorneys fees from a group of people for speaking out on a recall of that official. That is egregious, and its doubly egregious by enforcing a law that everyone understands is unconstitutional with the arguments they’re making. The ethics commission, the attorney generals office say that this law cant be applied.”

If nothing changes, a bench trial for damages is scheduled for April 21.