Did the City make a secret settlement agreement with former City Manager Tarron Richardson? Emails strongly suggest so.

Email exchanges between lawyers, city officials, and city insurance company representatives suggest the two sides were negotiating.

Last month it was reported that former City Manager Tarron Richardson voluntarily dropped “with prejudice” the federal lawsuit he filed last year against Charlottesville City Council, and other city officials, but emails obtained through a recent FOIA request show that a secret settlement may have been reached.

Local reporting characterized the dismissal of the lawsuit as a failure on Richardson’s part to serve papers to the defendants in time or to understand that he had waived his claims against the city when he signed a non-disparagement agreement in exchange for his severance. But heavily redacted emails that appeared among documents recently obtained by local attorney Jeffery Fogel through a FOIA request -- in his ongoing effort to make the settlement of claims of police misconduct public -- show lawyers, city officials, and representatives of the city’s liability insurance company going back and forth, at least since January 2022, on an email thread with the subject line: City…