Rejecting the town’s motion for reconsideration, a Superior Court judge has confirmed that it was an act of retaliation when the Chichester select board fired a highway department employee in May 2013.
Next, the judge will determine how much money he is owed.
Gilbert Vien was accused of misusing town property for personal gain and lying about it afterward. But Judge Richard McNamara of Merrimack County Superior Court found after a February trial that the town had used an “extraordinarily weak” case to remove Vien.
The town sought reconsideration in April, but McNamara wrote last month that its case consisted of “rearguing the facts found by the Court.”
“Whether or not the town retaliated depended on the intent of its officials. . . . Testimony of intent can only be proved circumstantially, and given all the facts and circumstances presented, the Court finds no reason to disturb its finding that the Town, through (former selectman Mike Paveglio) and (selectman Richard DeBold) terminated Mr. Vien with intent to retaliate,” he wrote.
Now, both sides are required to weigh in on how much Vien should receive in damages. Their responses to that question are due July 31.
McNamara also ordered that Vien should be reinstated to his job with the highway department.
Before Vien worked for the highway department, he was the chief of the town’s volunteer fire department. He claimed that he was fired from that job after he reported what he believed to be illegal conduct by his predecessor, Paveglio, who went on to be a selectman.
Vien sued for wrongful termination and settled for $27,500 before a judge could rule in February 2013. A stipulation of his settlement was that he couldn’t be retaliated against in his job at the highway department.
But about two months later, he was fired from his highway department job. He reopened the suit in August 2014, claiming the settlement was violated.
In rejecting the town’s motion for reconsideration, the judge wrote that the select board, which voted to remove Vien from his highway job, didn’t investigate the claims against him themselves, relying instead on inconclusive photographs taken by his political enemies. McNamara wrote that there’s “reason to believe the photographs did not accurately reflect what they purported to reflect.”
Namely, Vien was accused of using a town truck to dump crushed glass – a material that was given away for free – on a private road near his home.
“The only selectman that did go to the roadway, Mr. (Jeffrey) Jordan, testified he found no crushed glass in the roadway and that he was pressured into voting for terminating Mr. Vien by the other two selectmen,” McNamara wrote.
(Nick Reid can be reached at 369-3325, nreid@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @NickBReid.)