The secrets are out on deal to settle suit over Rosa Parks estate

The secrets are out on deal to settle suit over Rosa Parks estate


February 5, 2012

The secret legal agreement designed to settle the brawl over the estate of civil rights leader Rosa Parks is a secret no more.

The confidential seven-page document -- signed by Parks' 15 nieces and nephews, Parks' longtime friend and caregiver Elaine Steele and an official of the institute Parks and Steele founded -- turned up in a Jan. 18 filing with the Michigan Supreme Court.

The agreement -- struck during a late-night bargaining session in February 2007 in order to avert a trial in Wayne County Probate Court -- spells out how the parties are to divvy up the proceeds from the sale of Parks' belongings, said to be worth up to $8 million because of their historic value.

Under the agreement, Steele and the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development will get 80% of the net proceeds from the sale of Parks' possessions, as well as the royalties from licensing her name, image and likeness. The nieces and nephews are to get 20%.

The deal also requires:

• The parties to refrain from publicly criticizing one another.

• Parties that divulge the contents of the agreement must forfeit their share.

• Disputes under the agreement were to be resolved informally by Probate Judge Freddie Burton Jr. and, if that failed, were to go through binding arbitration.

The document was filed by a most unlikely person, Alan May, the same lawyer whose complaint about an alleged prior breach of confidentially of the agreement caused Burton to strip Steele and the institute of their share of Parks' estate.

May attached the agreement to a legal brief that urged the high court to reconsider its Dec. 29 decision ordering Burton to put Steele and retired 36th District Judge Adam Shakoor back in charge of the estate, in keeping with Parks' wishes.

"The Supreme Court released the settlement agreement, I didn't," May said last week, adding that the court's staff had assured him his filing would be kept under wraps. "I believed I was filing a sealed document."

The Supreme Court rejected his request to seal the entire file.

Steven Cohen, the Farmington Hills lawyer whom May had accused of publicly divulging part of the document, causing Steele and the institute to lose their share of the estate, said May was careless.

"Alan May and his clients used a phony breach of confidentiality to torture my clients," Cohen said. "I wonder whether Judge Burton will assess any sanctions against Mr. May for doing precisely what he falsely accused me of doing."

It's unclear what, if anything, Burton will do about the foul-up.

The relatives' lawyer, Lawrence Pepper of Farmington Hills, doubted whether it would affect the handling of the estate.

Cohen, May and Pepper would not discuss details of the agreement.

The filing flap is the latest twist in a six-year legal saga that began when Parks' relatives challenged the validity of her will and trust shortly after her death in 2005.

Parks sparked the modern civil rights movement in 1955 by refusing to give up her seat to a white man on an Alabama bus.

Parks picked Steele and Shakoor to handle her estate. But her relatives accused Steele of manipulating their aunt to cut them out of a share. Steele and Shakoor stepped aside, and Burton replaced them with Detroit lawyers John Chase Jr. and Melvin Jefferson Jr.

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