Denver city attorneys have agreed to settle an excessive-force lawsuit that would have required them to reveal unprecedented details on years’ worth of police-brutality investigations.

But the settlement does not appear to have gotten the city out of the obligation to hand over the documents. Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge John Kane — who had previously demanded that the city produce the documents in the lawsuit — ordered the city to hand them over in a separate excessive-force case. City officials have said that meeting such an order would take thousands of hours of staff time and cost tens of thousands of dollars.

The proposed settlement — in the lawsuit of Jason Graber, who claims Denver Officer Shawn Miller wrongfully roughed him up — is currently confidential. It must still be approved by Denver’s City Council at its Oct. 3 meeting, where details will be made public. One of Graber’s attorneys, David Lane, said he has asked to address the council at the meeting to urge members to create more transparency of abuse investigations.

“That is not a private personnel matter; that is a public trust matter,” Lane said of excessive-force complaints. “Even if the complaint is as illegitimate and unfounded as it can possibly be, it should still be open to the public. And the results of the investigation should be open to the public.”

Denver City Attorney Doug Friednash said he couldn’t comment on the settlement before it is approved by the council.

Graber’s attorneys said they needed the massive trove of documents — eight years’ worth of police excessive-force complaints and all details on the follow-up investigations — to try to prove their allegation that the department condones a culture of brutality. Kane ordered the city to hand over the documents, then angrily threatened fines when he said the city was stalling, a characterization the city denied.

On Monday, Kane ordered that the documents requested in Graber’s case must also be turned over in the case of James Moore, who alleges Miller also beat him.