Former Mayor settle lawsuit with Word of Life Bishop

it’s been a contentious legal fight five years in the making. former mayor john cook versus bishop tom brown. and today the two parties agreed on something! abc-7’s reporter maria garcia is live with new developments. the case was scheduled to go to trial this week. but at the 11th hour – cook and brown reached a settlement. the details of which are confidential. cook says he holds no hard feelings toward brown and would not change his decisions even if he knew how much it’d cost him. vo this all stems from cook – as a mayor – supporting health insurance benefits for gay and unmarried partners of city employees. brown led a ballot initiative to repeal the council’s decision – but the council still upheld it. so then brown led a recall effort against cook and cook took him to court saying brown’s recall methods were illegal. cook said he’s glad this is finally behind him. 00:26 both sides came to a compromise and as i like to say compromise is the art of making no one happy. everyone had to give something up to come to a settlement. walker 07:11 this has been a case that has tried the patience of many people. that there are a lot of strong feelings. that people hold dearly about a lot of different issues. and this case brought out a lot of those feelings and that’s okay because everybody is entitled to their view. but we just wanted to make sure that within the scope of what we do as a civilized society, that law matters that we do things according to the rule of law. brown’s attorney disagrees that the law was on the side of cook: he wrote me quote: bishop brown agreed to settle the case with mayor john cook rather than face the possibility of losing his church. although the law is clearly on bishop brown’s side, and he would most assuredly prevail on appeal, losing his church was just a risk he was unable to take. however bishop brown’s counterclaim against the city is still ongoing for violating his constitutional rights. back to you. el paso county recently realized there’s a zoning conflict along the mission