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Lawsuit Against Richland County Council Claims Awarding $1M Settlement Wrong

A lawsuit against Richland County Council claims they were wrong in awarding more than $1 million to former County Administrator Gerald Seals. Seals was fired back in April of this year.

Richland County, SC (WLTX) - A Richland County man is suing County Council and the former County Administrator over claims that they did not follow the law in approving a more than $1 million settlement.

Former County Administrator Gerald Seals was awarded more than $1 million in a settlement with the county after he was fired twice during the month of April. Council members claimed that Seals made unauthorized major changes to county policy, fired staff members at a higher rate than prior administrations, was sleeping during public meeting and left council member's questions on the renaissance project unanswered.

Seals, who still had more than a year left on his three-year contract, denied these claims in a letter to council and asked for a public hearing where he could speak his peace about the firing. Instead of a public meeting, council settled on paying Seals.

"The settlement amount is suspect," says attorney Joe McCulloch, who is representing William Coggins, plaintiff in the lawsuit. "If you look at his {Seals'} contract, it has a provision with a very specific and finite amount of money that he would have to be paid if fired."

According to the contract the amount is the sum of a year's salary, health benefits and unused annual leave. The lawsuit says that adds up to "slightly more than $200,000." It goes on to say that wrongful act claims against the county can't be larger than $300,000.

A copy of the lawsuit can be found here.

A copy of Seals' original contract with Richland County can be found here.

"If you add those two numbers together, you still got this unexplained hundreds of thousands of dollars that got paid for some reason," says McCulloch.

The money paid to Seals in his settlement with the county will come from the county's insurance fund, which is paid for by taxpayer money. News 19 made a Freedom of Information Act request for a copy of the settlement, with hopes that it will clear up why the county made the decision to agree to the amount, but the lawsuit says there may have been "claims threatened to be made against individual members of council for their individual statements or actions."

"We don't know when the check was written to Mr. Seals or whether it was written, but we do deserve to know why anybody ever really wanted to write him a check," says McCulloch.

The lawsuit asks that council not write the check for the settlement amount until the approval of the settlement can be reviewed. If the check was already written, the lawsuit asks that Seals not spend the money.

News 19 reached out to Richland County about the lawsuit, but they replied by explaining that the county does not comment on pending litigation.

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