A man involved in the petition to recall Craig Lutz has asked a Gwinnett County judge not to force the petition leader to pay the Hall County commissioner's legal fees.

Flowery Branch resident Michael Parker, who has previously been named in court documents regarding an effort to recall Lutz's 2010 election, filed the request in Hall County Superior Court Tuesday.

In his brief to Gwinnett Judge Thomas Davis, Parker wrote that statements Lutz made to the media show the commissioner violated the state's open meetings law shortly after his election.

"Commissioner Lutz intended to circumvent sunshine laws in the state of Georgia by meeting as individual citizens," Parker wrote. "Discussions were made. Plans assembled. Private meetings were routine."

Davis is handling the case because a local judge recused himself from the matter. He has already ruled that the application to recall Lutz's election was insufficient.

Lutz has asked Davis to force the leader of the recall effort, Kevin Kanieski, to pay his attorney fees.

Parker, who is not a party in the case, filed Tuesday as a "friend of the court."

He declined to comment on Tuesday's court filing.

But in statements to the judge handling the case, Parker wrote that "any reasonable man" would agree with the petition to recall Lutz. He said a judge should reject Lutz's request for legal fees, because Lutz "had reason to expect challenges to his actions as a sworn commissioner."

"I am concerned with the methods used by Commissioner Lutz," Parker wrote in his brief. "If such tactics are left unchecked, public participation in government and the rights to free expression curtailed in Hall County ..."

Before Parker filed his brief this week, his comments to Lutz and on the social media website Facebook had been used by Lutz's attorney in a court case over the effort to remove him from office.

The case began in August when a group, led by Kanieski, submitted a recall petition application to Hall County's election supervisor with 229 signatures — nearly 40 of which were disqualified — seeking Lutz's ouster.

The group charged that Lutz violated the state's open meetings law in the early days of his term, stating he was part of a coalition to fire Hall County's top administrators without allowing the entire board to vote on the matter.

Lutz, whose term as commissioner began in January, asked a judge to review the grounds of the petition application.

A week later, Kanieski withdrew the application for a recall petition. The Times' attempts to reach Kanieski have been unsuccessful since he withdrew the petition.

The judicial review of the application continued in court, however. Davis was assigned to the case after Hall County's chief superior court judge recused himself.

In a hearing on Oct. 7, Kanieski — who had the burden of proving cause for the recall effort — presented no evidence to support the application, according to an order filed by Davis.

With no evidence to show probable cause for the effort, Davis ruled in Lutz's favor and Lutz's attorney, Paul Stanley, promptly moved to have Kanieski pay $12,587.96 to cover Lutz's legal fees in the case.

In the request for fees, Stanley wrote that the effort was only meant to harass Lutz and cause him fiscal harm, using comments Parker made on a Recall Craig Lutz Facebook group page, as well as an affidavit signed by Lutz in which the commissioner says Parker admitted to him in a May phone conversation that the recall effort "amounted to nothing more than ‘harassment' and that it would be almost impossible to obtain the necessary signatures."

Parker, in previous statements to The Times, said that wasn't how he remembered the May conversation with Lutz.

Parker said he told Lutz that if the group "didn't go all the way, then what it would be like then would be just harassment."

Parker also said he also told Lutz that it would be "nearly impossible" to obtain the amount of signatures required to facilitate a recall election.

"I didn't say that it was being done to harass him or that it was impossible to do," Parker said in a Nov. 14 interview.

Stanley had not seen Parker's filing when contacted for comment Tuesday.

But he said he was "pleased" that Parker had weighed in on the case.

"I think it will give the judge some additional information to consider, and frankly, it might be information that would weigh in Commissioner Lutz's favor rather than the would-be petitioner's favor," Stanley said.

A secretary for Davis could not say Tuesday when the judge might rule on the motion for attorney's fees.