Mullin filed a lawsuit Thursday charging that the Wayne County Airport Authority board held an illegal meeting Oct. 31 when it voted to dump her. Mullin wants a Wayne Circuit judge to toss the results of that meeting and grant her back pay.
Attorney Ray Sterling said she'd even be willing to return to the airport.
"(Board member) Sam Nouhan and many others said she did a great job in her two months at the airport," Ray Sterling said in an email to The News. "She wanted to continue her mission then, and she would welcome the opportunity to continue it now."
Airport officials declined to discuss the specifics of the lawsuit. "We can't comment on the lawsuit since we haven't been served with it yet," said Scott Wintner, airport spokesman.
Mullin alleges the airport board wrongly refused her attorney's request to have an open discussion of her employment at the meeting and that the board did not properly notify the public about the meeting.
She is seeking to have the board's decision invalidated and, if nothing else, to have a new meeting in public; the board had talked with its attorney in private before it voted. Sterling had unsuccessfully sought to have that portion of the meeting be public.
The email was dated before the airport board met to nominate its CEO, violating the requirement that decisions be made before the public.
Airport Board Chair Renee Axt, who has resigned since the FBI began investigating Mullin’s hiring, selected the three person search committee from airport board members.
That committee was made up of Sam Nouhan, whose law firm was contracted for $1 million of work for Wayne County, Charlie Williams, who mediated the sale of Greektown Casino’s parking garage, earning $420,000, and Sue Hall, who is employed by the Wayne County Sheriff's Department.
Nouhan, Hall and Williams would decide who would be Metro Airport’s director.
Another email obtained by Marlinga showed that the group had withheld Mullin’s name from a report to Delta Airlines, Metro Airport's largest carrier.
Board member Nouhan wrote in the email that Delta is qualified to critique candidates with airport experience, but that it is not in regards to non-airport candidates, such as Mullin.
"That is why I didn’t reveal (Mullin’s) identity," Nouhan wrote.
Marlinga said that he believes withholding Mullin’s name is another deliberate attempt to hide the board's fait accompli selection of the ex-CEO.
On Friday, a judge will decide the legality of Mullin’s hiring. If in violation of Michigan’s open meetings law, her contract and the $750,000 severance salary granted to her would be nullified.
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