The town of Chichester – in an act of retaliation – used an “extraordinarily weak” case to fire Gilbert Vien from his position with the highway department in May 2013, a superior court judge ruled.
Vien’s wrongful termination lawsuit dates back to 2010, when he was fired from a different job as the town’s fire chief. That case was initially settled – with neither side admitting defeat – but reopened in August 2014 after Vien was fired again, this time from the highway department.
He was accused of misusing town property for personal gain and lying about it afterward.
After a trial in February, Judge Richard McNamara of the Merrimack County Superior Court ruled last month that the second firing was a retaliation against Vien by his political opponents.
McNamara ordered Vien be reinstated to his position with the highway department and a hearing be scheduled to determine the monetary damages he suffered.
The town has moved for a reconsideration, alleging that the court “misapprehended . . . evidence and/or overlooked certain facts.”
Vien had a history with two selectmen who voted to remove him when he was fire chief. One of them, Mike Paveglio, was chief of that department before Vien. As chief, Vien complained to the Department of Safety that Paveglio had lied on a grant application.
It was Christopher Weir – a friend of Paveglio’s – who made the complaint to Paveglio and took the photos that eventually got Vien fired from the highway department. He claimed to have seen Vien using a town truck to dump what appeared to be a load a gravel near Vien’s house on a private road, according to court documents. Weir and Paveglio “dislike” Vien, the court found.
McNamara portrayed the investigation carried out in 2013 by Paveglio and another selectman, Richard DeBold, as incomplete. He added that the third selectman, Jeffrey Jordan, “testified credibly that he was pressured by Paveglia (sic) and DeBold to agree to termination.”
“The case against Vien was extraordinarily weak,” McNamara wrote.
When the lawsuit was settled after Vien’s first firing, he received $27,500 and the settlement specifically noted that he shouldn’t suffer retaliation in his highway job. He was fired about three months later.
Another stipulation of that settlement was that the town was required to publicize in the annual town report that the case had been settled, “to remove the taint of termination,” according to the judge’s order.
“This information logically could have been part of the Selectmen’s report, since it related to litigation against the Town which had been concluded. It could have been reasonably placed in the area of the Town Report relating to the Fire Department,” McNamara wrote.
“Instead, the agreed to sentence was put in perhaps the most obscure place in the entire Town Report it could have been placed – on a blank sheet of paper at the end of the nine page proposed 2014 budget-line item detail, p. 38.”
The judge noted also that the font size was significantly smaller than the rest of the text in the town report. This decision makes it “patently obvious that the town carried out its obligations under the Settlement Agreement in a grudging manner” and supports the court’s conclusion that the town retaliated against Vien for bringing a lawsuit against it, McNamara wrote.
Road Agent Jim Plunkett, who supervised Vien, said Thursday that “no one has said anything to me” about Vien’s reinstatement.
Vien’s attorney had not yet filed an objection to the town’s motion to reconsider.
The town’s attorney, Daniel Mullen, wrote that it was reasonable for the selectmen to conclude Vien was hauling fill or crushed glass to his private road, “and his denial of that fact was more than enough to terminate his employment.”