Settlements in line lawsuits are mostly completed; lawyers accuse Bergen County of making an ‘unserious’ settlement offer

Thirteen county clerks have signed consent orders as part of a settlement of a lawsuit filed by Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) to eliminate county organization lines in primary elections, according to a status report filed with U.S. Magistrate Judge Tonianne Bongiovanni in advance of a December 6 settlement conference.

That includes county clerks in Morris and Passaic, the most recent ones to agree to the settlement.

Kim’s lawyers, Brett Pugach and Yael Bromberg, said that the Cape May, Hudson, Hunterdon, and Ocean county clerks have agreed to the settlement in principle.  Some are awaiting approvals of monetary settlements to pay legal fees.

That leaves Union County (in the Kim case, but not in the original lawsuit filed by former congressional candidate Christine Conforti and Bergen as the last two unsettled counties.

“Discussions with the Bergen County Clerk have not been particularly productive,” Pugach and Bromberg said.

The two attorneys said that Bergen proposed a private settlement agreement removing the need for U.S. District Court Judge Zahid Quraishi to approve their offer.  They said the “substance and content of the proposed settlement agreement represents a radical departure from the substantive agreement signed by all other county clerks thus far, including in that it only relates to the Democratic Party primary ballots, whereas all other settlements in this matter relate to both Democratic Party and Republican Party primary ballots.”

“(It) does not provide for counsel fees,” Pugach and Bromberg told the judge.  “Simply put, it is an unserious counteroffer.”

They added, “The Bergen County Clerk’s position that he does not possess authority to enter into a consent order is simply divorced from reality, and leads to an untenable situation where Plaintiffs are trying to settle with a party that, at best, mistakenly believes it is prohibited from settling.”

“The theme of living in different realities has been the overall tenor of our exchanges with counsel for the Bergen County Clerk. Just this morning, a letter ostensibly for the purpose of advancing settlement discussions was filed on the public docket which casts misleading and untruthful statements of our ongoing settlement discussions, despite the fact that the substance of all settlement discussions in this case have been sent privately to Your Honor, at your direction,” the lawyers said.  “We welcome the Court’s guidance and assistance in resolving these issues.”

Paul Kaufman, the Bergen County Clerk’s attorney, said that Kim was “seeking over $1,150,000 in attorney’s fees from the various clerks – that is from thew taxpayers – which is unsubstantiated and offensive.”

“It is correct that the settlement the Bergen County Clerk offered did not include attorneys’ fees because Kim’s attorneys have never produced a retainer agreement, times records or any justification for these excessive fees. We also fail to see why the taxpayers should pay his fees for what is really a political case not one motivated by high principle,” said Kaufman.  “We note that Sen.-elect Kim had no problem accepting the line in 2022.

Five of seven county party organizations have reached agreements in the Conforti case, leaving Camden Democrats and Morris Republicans as the last holdouts.

This story was updated at 10:42 PM.