Judge orders City of Las Vegas to release settlement agreement for councilwoman’s lawsuit

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A district court judge ruled against a sitting Las Vegas Councilwoman Monday and ordered the city to release a confidential settlement agreement in which the councilwoman – current mayoral candidate Victoria Seaman — received a $100,000 settlement in 2018. The judge's decision reverses a prior temporary order that the city keep the settlement under seal.

The settlement was the result of a 2017 lawsuit Seaman and her husband, John Seaman, filed against the City of Las Vegas and several contractors after a one-car crash in 2015. One of those contractors was Las Vegas Paving. The Seamans alleged serious injury after their 2014 Honda Accord, driven by John Seaman with Victoria Seaman in the passenger seat, drove into an improperly marked section of excavated road. Both Seaman and the city acknowledge that the settlement amount did not include any taxpayer money.

It is the second lawsuit between Seaman and the city of Las Vegas. In a well-publicized skirmish that resulted in a physical altercation, Seaman filed a negligence lawsuit against the city and former city councilwoman Michele Fiore. That suit, September 2022 stemmed from a fracas that left Seaman with a broken finger. That lawsuit is ongoing, court records show. Fiore, who stands trial Tuesday morning in federal court for wire fraud in an unrelated criminal case, countersued Seaman, court records show.

Despite Monday's order from Judge Erika Ballou, Seaman declared partial victory Monday night because the order requires the city to redact two key terms of the agreement, namely "the total settlement amounts and the amounts paid by the co-defendants redacted."

"Several non -governmental co-defendants may have an interest in keeping the amounts they paid confidential," Ballou wrote. "Thus, the Court agrees with the City's argument, that the total settlement amounts and the amounts paid by the co-defendants shall be redacted to balance any privacy concerns of the codefendants, while still providing public access to the public record. The Court finds that the disclosure of the Settlement Agreement is mandated in this case with the total settlement amounts and the amounts paid by the co-defendants redacted."

In 2017, Seaman and her husband sued the city and three other named defendants in Clark County District Court, alleging injuries and other damages sustained in a one-car crash in 2015. At the time, Seaman was a Republican Assemblywoman representing Clark County. Specifically, the lawsuit claims physical injury, pain and suffering, loss of income and property damage. The complaint also speaks of "loss of consortium," which generally refers to an interruption in, or diminishing of, a married couple's ability to be intimate.

"I don't feel that I did anything wrong," Seaman told the 8 News Now Investigators Monday. "I almost died in an accident. We sued for our medical. And we signed a confidentiality. And the city paid nothing."

The lawsuit alleges that Las Vegas Paving and Tab Contractors, both prominent construction companies in Las Vegas, were "performing road work on Rampart Boulevard between Tournament Hills Drive and Summerlin Parkway," and had "excavated a large section of asphalt roadway down to the road foundation which completely spanned the middle lane of Rampart Boulevard."

The lawsuit further alleges that the contractors did not properly mark and barricade the excavation and that the Semans' car drove into it, injuring him. Eventually, the parties agreed to a "global" settlement of $100,000, according to the city's finance department. However, "the city did not contribute any funds or amounts toward this $100,000 amount," according to an email from the finance department.

Even before that settlement, though, Seaman argued in court documents and hearings that certain items should be kept private.

In June 2018, at the Seamans' request, a so-called Discovery Commissioner – responsible for arbitrating the pretrial discovery process where Seaman and the city and construction companies can depose each other – issued a protective order that prohibited attorneys from asking deposition questions that "intrude into unrelated family members, political views, or political history.

Even so, attorneys for the Seamans argued that defense attorneys "asked a number [of] improper questions that deeply intruded into Plaintiffs' 'unrelated family matters' including Plaintiff's individual marital histories, the quality and nature of Plaintiff's relationships with their children, and personal preferences regarding Plaintiff's home life that are unrelated" to the 2015 car crash.

Court documents indicate Victoria Seaman's deposition was set and continued three times. Motions from multiple parties refer to various questions and answers throughout John Seaman's deposition that are under seal.

"I feel that this is a private matter between me and the entities that asked me to sign a confidentiality," Seaman said in an on-camera interview Monday.

She continued: "Nothing is a secret. It's just – like what's happening right now. There are certain things that the public has a right to know about and there are certain things that the public doesn't have a right to know about. Which is a confidential agreement between me and the other parties. And there's other things, If the city or the taxpayers are not involved and it's private, I just feel like, you know, we're just trying to figure out how much I got paid and by who paid it."

Calling the circumstances surrounding the aforementioned protective order "prickly at times," attorneys for Las Vegas Paving argued against the court allowing the Seamans to refuse to answer questions – or questions on entire topics – at deposition.

"Certainly, over the life of the case, there has been a lot of discussion about the protective order, objections at depositions, and discussion about specific information being protected in Victoria's upcoming deposition," Las Vegas Paving's attorneys wrote in a motion.

The original request to publicize the details of the Seamans' $100,000 stemming from this lawsuit comes from Lou Colagiovanni, whose Facebook page appears to identify him as a consultant, talk show host and former journalist. Colagiovanni, state campaign finance records show, received $3,600 from Fiore's campaign for city councilwoman in 2020.

Attorneys for Las Vegas Paving responded with no comment, and in response to a question asking for certain sealed court filings, directed the 8 News Now Investigators to the court reporter who took John Seaman's deposition. That court reporter did not respond to 8 News Now's emails.

Seaman's lawsuit against Fiore and the City is ongoing. At a press conference in April, Seaman said she tried to settle that lawsuit but that the city denied its offer, which included conditions that the city change certain policies when incidents occur inside City Hall.

The city, which like most government entities does not comment on pending litigation, offered a statement on Seaman's settlement offer, saying through a spokesperson, "The City Attorney's Office confirms their outside counsel received a settlement offer from Councilwoman Seaman's legal counsel. The offer will not appear on a City Council agenda. Changes to city policy do not require a lawsuit settlement."

Tuesday, Seaman defended her lawsuit against the city and Fiore.

"That city councilwoman [Fiore] broke my finger and the city did nothing. They wouldn't investigate it until a year and a half later," Seaman said.

Attorneys in that case are due in court on September 27 for a status check. Trial is slated to begin in June 2026.