The Detroit Free Press has settled its public records lawsuit against the City of Detroit for access to documents involved in a 2019 investigation that found Mayor Mike Duggan gave preferential treatment to a prenatal health program run by a woman with close ties to the mayor.
The Free Press filed the lawsuit last year after the city demanded $222,667 for the records and estimated it would take about three years for legal staff to review the documents, which the city said totaled about 400,000 pages.
Under the settlement, reached in late December in Wayne County Circuit Court, the Free Press dropped its complaint and the city agreed to produce several batches of investigative records for the news organization free of charge. The city admitted no wrongdoing as part of the agreement.