White County Court Friday morning found the Carmi City Council’s action to amend and ratify the agreement with Lashly & Baer met the burden and thereby vacated the temporary restraining order issued in favor of Landon “Rudy” Rudolph earlier this month. In on the hearing Friday morning were Rudolph, representing himself, City Attorney Greg Stewart on behalf of the municipality, and Attorney Shelby Clark representing Mayor Stendeback, City Clerk Cynthia Attebury, and the city. Rudolph questioned whether the mayor had the authority in the first place to enter into the agreement even though the council’s actions did amend and ratify that agreement Stendeback entered into with Lashly & Baer to handle the influx of Freedom of Information Act requests.
The parties referenced other cases including Direct Energy versus the City of Harvey as well as a City of Belleville that dates back to 2000.
Judge Denton Aud said while the Temporary Restraining Order was appropriate at the time, the council’s actions had meet the burden to resolve that part of the matter.
Attorney Stewart said he intended to file a motion for dismissal with a goal date for getting that filed by October 2nd. All parties agreed that date was ok in advance of the next hearing scheduled for October 9th.
Rudolph ended the hearing by asking Judge Aud if he thought his overseeing this case was a conflict of interest due to his history with Rudolph. The judge said he didn’t have a problem with Rudolph and if he allowed his history as a prosecutor to interfere with his rulings, he would probably have a conflict with two-thirds of the cases he sees now. Aud was the prosecuting attorney securing guilty verdicts or plea deals involving Rudolph in 2011, 2013, and 2014.