The city has spent nearly $100,000 defending its decision to reject a Wal-Mart at Sixth Street and Wakarusa Drive, according to documents released Tuesday by City Hall.

“Obviously, it’s unfortunate,” Mayor David Dunfield said. “But the city has to defend its policies.”

Bill Newsome, a partner in 6Wak Land Investments LLC, the corporation that owns the land where Wal-Mart wants to build, said the growing bill was an expected result of the city’s decisions.

“We have a legal right to develop that property … and the city has chosen not to honor it,” he said. “To take that action is going to be expensive to the taxpayers.”

Wal-Mart and 6Wak have filed six lawsuits since May 2003 to challenge the city’s decision to reject building permits for the site — and a seventh lawsuit is on the way, Newsome said.

The city’s legal bills come from payments to three law firms: Allen & Cooley, which later became Gilliland and Hayes of Lawrence, and Lathrop and Gage of Overland Park

Gilliland and Hayes, the firm of attorney Gerald Cooley, is the city’s usual firm. The city pays an annual retainer of $20,000 to the firm, plus $100 an hour.

Lathrop and Gage’s attorneys charge as much as $295 an hour, and as much as $115 an hour for work done by paralegals.

Since May, the city has paid $35,382 to Cooley’s firm, and $60,959 to Lathrop and Gage, for a total of $96,341.

Those figures don’t include 6Wak’s $91,000 legal bill that Douglas County District Judge Michael Malone last summer ordered the city to pay. He will hear the city’s request to change that decision during a Feb. 19 hearing.

Asked whether the city could afford the expense, Dunfield responded: “The city can’t afford to cave in under the threat of lawsuits.”

Also this week, the city filed a motion to prevent 6Wak and Wal-Mart from taking depositions of Planning Director Linda Finger and Neighborhood Resources Director Victor Torres.

The city’s motion is an attempt to limit 6Wak and Wal-Mart’s ability to seek city information and records in the matter, a process known as discovery.

“Discovery is not to be used to harass or merely for a fishing expedition,” Lathrop and Gage attorney Scott Beeler wrote in the motion. “If plaintiffs were permitted to conduct discovery in this action, that is exactly what it would amount to.”

Newsome said the city was trying to “limit information.”

“All we want to do is get the facts on the table,” he said. “We’ve got a right to know that, and the public has a right to know that.”

No other hearings have been scheduled in the lawsuits.