Reporter gets $850,000 in raid suit | Marion County Record | Aug. 12, 2026 ()

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Reporter gets $850,000 in raid suit

Three years to the day after police raided the Record newsroom and two Marion homes, former reporter Phyllis Zorn’s attorney filed documents Tuesday indicating that she had settled her claims against the City of Marion for for a reported $850,000.

The settlement in federal court for violation of the 1st and 4th Amendment and Privacy Protection Act along with aggravation of a seizure disorder is in addition to $600,000 she already received from Marion County for the sheriff’s department’s involvement in the raid. That brings the total she has received to $1.45 million.

Zorn abruptly retired from the Record the next workday after receiving her county settlement. She subsequently purchased a home and moved out of the county.

Her suits were among several — some of them still pending — brought against both the city and the county in connection with the raid.

Former Record reporter Deb Gruver previously settled with the city for $235,000 and with the county for $250,000, bringing her total to $485,000. In additional to constitutional and federal law violations, she claimed aggravation of a hand injury.

Former Record office manager Cheri Bentz previously settled with the city for $160,000 and the county for $50,000, bringing her total to $210,000. She claimed emotional damage from the raid.

Both left the Record, citing stress related to the raid.

Still pending against the city are suits by former city council member Ruth Herbel and her husband, Ron, whose home was raided; by the Record itself; by publisher Eric Meyer; and by the estate of co-owner Joan Meyer, Eric’s mother, who died a day after the raid of sudden cardiac arrest attributed at least in part to stress of having police guarding her in her home for 2½ hours during the raid.

The Herbels, who claim constitutional damages and aggravation of Ron Herbel’s dementia, earlier settled with the county for $650,000.

Joan Meyer’s estate settled with the county for $1 million. The Record settled with the county for $300,000. And Eric Meyer settled with the county for $200,000.

A condition of the county settlements was that a stipulated judgment be entered in which the county admitted as part of the official legal record of the case that the raids were illegal.

Altogether, with potentially the largest claims still to be settled, the city and the county have paid $4.304 million because of the disavowed raids.

Only $50,000 of this — the county’s settlement with Bentz — has come from taxpayers. So far, city and county settlements and all legal costs they have incurred have been covered by insurance companies.

The city did have to pay $75,748.22 to partially reimburse the Record for its legal fees after the city was found to have acted in bad faith by denying an open records request for incriminating text messages about the raid between then-mayor David Mayfield and then-administrator Brogan Jones.

Negotiations on potentially settling remaining claims have been ongoing.

The Herbels have indicated that they prefer to take their case to trial in hope of establishing a clear legal precedent.

Meyer and the Record have indicated a willingness to settle but only if the settlement does not unduly burden taxpayers and only if the city fully confesses in a consent judgment to having knowingly violated the law for political purposes.

“A week after the raid,” Meyer said Tuesday, “everybody from the governor’s office on down had been officially told that we did nothing wrong, yet the city allowed chief Gideon Cody to remain in his job and draft arrest warrants for us. We weren’t publicly cleared until almost a year later.

“Even then, the city’s lawyers persisted in arguing that a federal law the raid clearly violated wasn’t ‘established’ and therefore could be ignored. We want a specific admission of guilt in official court records so that excuse can’t be used again elsewhere.”

In addition to cases in the Kansas district of federal court, several other actions remain pending.

Cody faces a felony trial in Marion County District Court for allegedly urging destruction of text...