Court won't force U-46 into talks

A federal judge Wednesday rejected a bid to force Elgin Area School District U-46 to participate in settlement talks in the racial bias lawsuit brought by black and Hispanic families.

It was the second time a judge denied the families' request to compel the district to engage in court-supervised settlement talks.

In a filing earlier this week, U-46 said the positions of the two sides were too far apart to make a settlement conference worthwhile.

Judge Michael Mason said he would not oversee talks unless both sides were willing participants.

In an August court appearance, Mason urged both sides to consider settlement.

"It is clear from defendant's response that the district is not interested at this time," Mason wrote in Wednesday's opinion.

Mason also denied a request by the families to force the district to produce documents from the files of all U-46 principals.

Attorneys for U-46 balked at the request, saying the files did not contain relevant information that was not already included in the nearly 400,000 documents the district has produced to date.

Mason ruled the burden and expense of searching the files of more than 50 principals outweighed the likely benefit.

Mason did approve the families' motion to compel the district to produce scanned electronic copies of the 400,000 documents.

The district already had scanned the documents but declined to share them with opposing counsel.

Mason noted that giving the families access to the electronic, searchable copies would save a tremendous amount of time and energy.

He ordered the families to pay half the original scanning costs and the entire cost of producing the copies.