Wayne Airport Authority's Latest Defense: We Illegally Hired Mullin So We Shouldn't Have To Pay Her For Illegally Firing Her, Right?"

You can't make this stuff up.

The Detroit Free Press: Airport board: We broke the law in hiring Turkia Awada Mullin

The excuse is this: We broke the law hiring her, so its ok that we broke the law firing her.

In Wayne County, the logic seems to be" Since two wrongs can make a right, and two Wrights can make an airplane, then two bad decisions by an Airport Authority can relieve it of liability.

The board that hired and then fired Turkia Awada Mullin as CEO of Metro Airport last year now claims in a court filing that it broke the law when it hired her.

The Wayne County Airport Authority hopes that making the admission will get it off the hook for the more than $700,000 that Mullin says she is owed in severance under the terms of a contract that agreed to pay her $250,000 a year for three years.

Mullin was fired in October, after only a couple of months on the job. She was mired in controversy because of a $200,000 severance payment she got when she left as Wayne County's economic development chief to take the airport job.

The authority's legal motion, filed Jan. 18 but not previously reported, says the board illegally delegated its obligation to negotiate and approve contracts by designating one board member to negotiate with Mullin and another to sign the deal without bringing it back to the board.

As I said before, the fix really seems to be in on this one. If this is the best defense they've got for firing her, I think we can start attributing the incompetence to malice rather than just run of the mill Wayne County Democrat stupidity.

One claim of wrongdoing hardly vitiates a subsequent wrongdoing by the same party. This bizarre argument is a reverse unclean hands defense: I acted in bad faith and unethically before, so that should prevent me from being liable for acting in bad faith and unethically now.

Yep, that defense will fly.