CHICAGO — Martha Kopacz, who is serving as a municipal finance expert witness to the Detroit bankruptcy case, asked the court Friday to force the city and Ernst & Young to turn over documents that they have so far refused to release.
Kopacz's attorney, Stephen Lerner with Squire Sanders LLP, filed the request Friday. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes, who is overseeing the case, quickly set a hearing for May 28 on the issue.
Rhodes hired Kopacz in April to analyze the city's plan of confirmation and whether the assumptions that underlie the city's cash-flow projections and forecasts are reasonable.
She is required to finish the work by June 24, a deadline that will be difficult to reach without the requested documents, Lerner said in the court filing.
The documents include the formulas and calculations behind the values in the models and the plan of confirmation. The accounting firm refused based on its policy against sharing such versions of financial models, the letter said.
The city has also refused to turn over key documents that summarize the post-confirmation annual financial plan and that include the plan commitments and the restructuring and reinvestment initiatives by year, the filing said.
"The information provided to date by the city is inconsistent and does not take into account certain more recent information," the filing says. "The expert is concerned that without the fully functioning E&Y model and the additional documentation ... she will be unable to fulfill her duty to provide an expert opinion on feasibility, let alone by June 24, 2014."
