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file lawsuit against city.
Oh...it's a lovely thing to be led by an childish idiot !!
By Michael Holtzman
Herald News Staff Reporter
Posted Sep 16, 2010 @ 10:42 PM
Last update Sep 17, 2010 @ 07:14 AM
FALL RIVER — Fired eight months ago from well-paying government jobs with three-year contracts given by their longtime boss and outgoing mayor, Jeffrey Santos and Kathleen Edwards struck back this week with a lawsuit against the city.
Their Providence attorney Richard Peirce alleges their constitutional rights were violated because they were terminated “due to their political association with the former mayor” — Robert Correia — and they were fired without due process.
Mayor Will Flanagan, on his first full day in office, fired the two recently appointed Community Development Agency employees.
The 11-page complaint does not list monetary damages.
It seeks, however, reinstatement of Santos’ $85,000-a-year job as Community Development Agency executive director and for Edwards in her $55,000-a-year job of executive secretary/contracts compliance officer.
The suit seeks compensatory damages for the full length of the two contracts and for emotional distress, punitive damages if the city showed willful misconduct, attorney’s fees and other relief the court determines.
They seek a jury trial.
Santos and Edwards are longtime city residents who worked for Correia for the bulk of his 30 years as a state representative and two-year term as mayor.
Correia lost his re-election in the preliminary last September, after which Flanagan was elected in November.
Flanagan, joined by Corporation Counsel Steven Torres in his sixth-floor office, said he “deemed the lawsuit frivolous and without merit” — and worse.
“The lawsuit’s not worth even the paper it’s printed on,” Flanagan said Thursday after obtaining a copy from New Bedford Superior Court. Later, he took pleasure putting the document through a shredder at Government Center.
“I don’t believe they’re entitled to one red cent,” he said, stating that city lawyers would defend the suit and there’d be “no settlement.”
“They were not terminated due to their political affiliations. They were terminated because of contracts against public policy,” Flanagan said.
Torres said, “The contracts had provisions extended by the outgoing mayor that if the new mayor comes in he is responsible for the remainder of the contracts.”
He said the contracts “were written by a mayor that was not re-elected with the purpose of tying the hands of the administration. It’s what case law says it can’t do.”
The language says if the city terminates the agreement “for convenience,” it must pay out the cash value of the contracts, along with accrued time owed.
Torres has called that severance provision “unconscionable.”
The complaint Peirce assembled on behalf of Santos and Edwards included contentions that both were qualified for their jobs. It said Santos had “oversight” of the CDA since July 2008 after Robert Laughlin “resigned his position” as interim director and that neither of the two could be fired under their contracts unless they resigned, retired, died or for “just cause.”
The lawsuit claims no city official explained or justified their terminations or gave them opportunity to be heard prior to the firings. It also points to the three-year contracts for Torres and Assistant Corporation Counsel Elizabeth Sousa Pereira, which extend by about a year beyond Flanagan’s elected term, and by not including termination clauses would give his appointed full-time lawyers their salaries and benefits for the lengths of those contracts.
It would entitle them “to the same type of benefits provided for in the Edwards and Santos agreements,” the suit contends.
Peirce, contacted at his firm of RCF&P, said he was basically asserting a breach of contract and a breach of First Amendment rights.
“There is a contractual obligation to employ them,” Peirce said.
He said their severance under the contracts “should have no bearing on the city’s decision to discharge Edwards and Santos,” both of whom he said have been unemployed.
Peirce also said it made no difference that Correia had lost in the preliminary when he appointed Santos on Nov. 1 — the day before Election Day — and Edwards on Dec. 1, and gave both three-year contracts on Dec. 21, days before his term as mayor expired.
“I haven’t heard any representative of the city say Mayor Correia did not have the authority to enter into their contracts, other that they’re against public policy,” Peirce said.
The day he fired them, Flanagan said, “There was no search, no other candidate was considered, the appointments were open for years and, in the last 30 days (Correia) filled those appointments with key staffers. That would strengthen the case if it went to court.”
Edwards had been Correia’s chief of staff and Santos his longtime administrative assistant.
The lawsuit says Flanagan issued letters to them on Jan. 5 that said their CDA jobs “were not properly filled.”
Peirce had issued a “demand letter” to Torres on Feb. 26 to discuss the terminations, which he said did not result in any productive discussions.
While Peirce said he found it “ironic” that Torres found the contracts unconscionable while his contract term extends beyond Flanagan’s term, the city officials disputed the outcome would be the same on Torres’ extended contract if he were fired.
He agreed Santos’ contract lists the terms and is silent on any termination pay he could be owed. “There’s not a hammer clause,” he said, stating the city would have to pay long term severance.
Flanagan said his staff and legal counsels “are seen as part of the administrat
ion. The CDA is not part of the administration. They’re clouding the issue.
“It’s like Obama coming in and having to keep all of George Bush’s people in his cabinet. It just doesn’t happen,” Flanagan said.
He said what makes the Santos-Edwards provisions “against public policy is it makes the city liable for the full three years. No contracts have that.”
Other city contracts, however, have 60- and 90-day notice or severance, such as the one signed this spring for City Administrator Shawn Cadime, which lists both a 60- and 90-day notice that Flanagan said needs correcting.
Flanagan stated another factor he believes is relevant: that he retained Santos’ son as a member of the Licensing Board and Edwards’ husband, who was Correia’s campaign treasurer, as a member of the Planning Board.
“The sibling and spouse remain on the city’s payroll,” Flanagan said. “That diminishes their case. They have no case.”
“Our position is they’re bound by those contracts,” Peirce said.
Peirce said he planned to serve the suit on the city today. The city would have 20 days to issue its answer.
E-mail Michael Holtzman at mholtzman@heraldnews.com.
The worm does turn, doesn't it?! When Mayor Correia signed the "Contracts from Hell" for his primary water carrier Santos and long time secretary Edwards I was enraged like any reasonable Fall Riverite. Even in a political moral backwater like Fall River there is a line that should never be crossed, and Correia clearly did just that with these two contracts. This was simply an unacceptable reaction by an unpopular mayor and politician who clearly had misjudged the public perception of him and his administration. When these contracts were proposed, I had a very strong feeling they were granted, not just to personally reward these two long serving individuals, but to symbolize the giving of a huge middle finger to the City for rejecting Correia. It was an act of retribution by a spoiled child. I call this Act I.
Now comes Act II. From one bad contract outrage to a couple of others. It would appear the City's legal eagles have learned nothing with the change of administrations. While Sylvanagan decried the gifts handed over to Santos and Edwards, he gave a few out of his own, and continues to do so.
By any stretch of the imagination Sylvanagan and Torres have contrived to do exactly the same thing that Correia did. Yet they want the world outside of themselves to accept their tenuous explanation of the why's and how's of their own legal machinations in the manner and award of contracts for their own close and high ranking supporters. I just don't think this is going to end well for Fall River taxpayers, and that usually means carrying the cost for yet another legal screw-up!
This was supposed to be the low-cost legal administration. All we have witnessed since the election of Bag Boy Deluxe Sylvanagan is one legal bad opinion after another, and ALL of them are going to come home to roost on YOUR backs. Amazing.....I honestly never thought this clown would be smart enough to bamboozle the entire Fall River electorate, but, you know how bad I am at predicting politics in this City!
How utterly childish is it to have a photo taken of you putting a copy of the lawsuit filed against you through a paper shredder! Oh yes, I immediately thought of John Kennedy when I saw that picture! (HA!) More like Richard Nixon! And how embarrassed will this City then be if a settlement or judgement is eventually made against Fall River as a result of that lawsuit? Well, not me, actually. I'll just heave a mighty YUK towards City Hall! I'm sure I will not be alone.
Haven't you all had enough of the Titticut Follies this City has become under this selfish, sociopath fool of a mayor? This type of outrage will continue, it's clear and predictable. Opps, there I go again, predicting things...Let's just call it a feeling and leave it at that.
Act III. I wonder what that will be? Probably the next Mayor having to explain away the legal stupidity of Sylvanagan and Torres and the need for a take funds away from the City Budget to pay for a legal settlement. All I can say is "Oh...it's a lovely thing to be led by an childish idiot !!"
