By Mike Donoghue, Senior Correspondent
Former Woodstock Police Chief Joseph Swanson has filed a $5 million civil lawsuit against Municipal Manager Eric Duffy and five Village Trustees over his recent demotion and removal as head of the police department.
Seton McIlroy, the board chair, Jeffrey Kahn, the vice chair, and fellow trustees Brenda Blakeman, Lisa Lawlor and Frank Horneck are named, like Duffy, as individual defendants in the case filed this week in Vermont Superior Court in Woodstock.
The Village and Town of Woodstock, along with Burgess Loss Prevention Associates of Lebanon, N.H., also are named as defendants in the wide-ranging 31-page lawsuit.
The lawsuit maintains the defendants were involved in the “extraordinary unlawful efforts” to remove Swanson as the police chief and to “demote” him to patrol officer.
The actions of the defendants “damaged the professional reputation of Plaintiff and caused him to suffer extreme emotional distress and economic damages,” the lawsuit notes. It also claims the defendants caused Swanson “to suffer profound economic losses, psychological distress, and irreparable damage to his reputation.”
The Vermont Standard had reported last week that Swanson’s defense lawyer stated a civil lawsuit would be forthcoming after the Village Trustees secretly ruled they would uphold Duffy’s plan to demote Swanson.
“The trustee’s written findings contain inflammatory, malicious, insulting attacks on Chief Swanson’s character consistent with the bad faith motives of Mr. Duffy and the Village in their extraordinary unlawful attempts to remove Chief Swanson from his contracted position,” his attorney Linda E. Fraas had told the Vermont Standard last week.
She promised the causes of action in the civil lawsuit would include “breach of contract, wrongful discharge, intentional infliction of emotional distress, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and tortious interference with contract.”
The lawsuit, filed this week, followed through on her promise to seek damages. It requests a judgement of $5 million “inclusive of compensatory and punitive damages against the defendants to provide full, fair and complete compensation for all past and future losses.”
A jury trial is also requested.
All nine defendants are sued for both intentional infliction of emotional distress and for punitive damages, records show.
Duffy, along with the village and town of Woodstock, are named together in three other counts: breach of contract, wrongful discharge, and breach of covenant of good faith, the lawsuit notes.
Duffy, the five trustees — McIlroy, Kahn, Blakeman, Horneck, and Lawlor — along with Burgess Loss Prevention also all are sued under the Common Law Conspiracy provision, court papers note.
The town and the village also are named in a count claiming tortious interference with contractual relations and a separate claim for violating Vermont’s Fair Employment Practices Act, the lawsuit said.
Burgess also is named in a lone count for a professional negligence claim, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit was filed this week by Fraas of Manchester, N.H., who represented Swanson during his 14 ½-hour demotion hearing that started on Wednesday March 19 and ran into the early morning hours of Thursday March 20.
Many of the points Fraas attempted to make with the Trustees in her proposed written findings of fact and conclusions of law for the hearing, are the basis for the lawsuit.
The Village Trustees in their secret written decision apparently opted instead to use many of the findings of fact offered by Duffy’s two lawyers, John Klesch and Matthew Bloomer.
The Village Trustees delivered a lengthy report upholding Duffy’s request to demote Swanson.
The trustees and Duffy have failed to provide copies of the final written report — believed to be 47 pages — despite multiple requests under Vermont’s Public Records Law by the Vermont Standard and others.
The village officials, instead of releasing the public record, wrote they referred the requests for the lengthy report to their legal counsel and hoped to have a decision by May 10.
The Vermont Standard filed subsequent objections because the May 10 date exceeds the legal deadline for a response under the state law. McIlroy said Tuesday the proper deadline would be met.
Fraas has said there is nothing under Vermont’s Public Records Law that mandates the Woodstock officials withhold the report from their bosses — the taxpayers.
The defendants will be required to file with the superior court in May a written response answering all the specific claims in the 261-paragraph lawsuit.
The Windsor County Sheriff’s Department served the lawsuit on each of the defendants in recent days.
Various attempts to reach all the defendants for a comment about the civil lawsuit were unsuccessful. Duffy said in an email Tuesday afternoon he was busy with the upcoming closing on the water system and might not have time to respond.
McIlroy, Kahn, Blakeman, Lawlor and Horneck opted not to offer a comment to the Vermont Standard about the claims filed against them.
The lawsuit claims the Burgess firm did not “properly conduct a thorough, objective and impartial investigation and the process was flawed with demonstrated bias.” It also maintained Burgess used leading and suggestive techniques when interviewing employees about Swanson’s actions.
The lawsuit also said Burgess had recommended that Duffy’s lawyer “should be involved in all communications in order to create confidential attorney-client privilege.” Burgess also requested phone calls to avoid creating a written record, the lawsuit said.
Fraas also wrote that Burgess did not seek out any witnesses that might support Swanson, who was born and raised in Woodstock.
Attempts to reach William Burgess, owner of the Lebanon, N.H. Company, for comment were unsuccessful.
Burgess, who was paid $7,000 for 57 hours of work, had labeled his Dec. 10, 2024 report to Duffy as a “Confidential Internal Report.” However it turned out to be a public record and was released by the village when the Vermont Standard filed a public records request.
While Swanson continues to fight to remain chief, Fraas said he agreed to an order to report for duty as a patrol officer last week. She noted the department is short-staffed and Swanson is willing to help in any way he could pending the final resolution.
The lawsuit also confirmed a Vermont Standard news story that said Duffy had removed Swanson’s name as police chief from the municipal website. The lawsuit said it happened four months before Duffy announced his intention to demote Swanson.
Duffy’s decision to demote Swanson to patrol officer “was arbitrary and capricious and motivated by malice and bad faith,” the lawsuit said.
It added that McIlroy, Kahn, Blakeman, Lawlor and Horneck “jointly conspired to intentionally and maliciously demote Plaintiff knowing that there was no legal authority to do so” in violation of his contract.
The lawsuit maintains that McIlroy and Kahn as trustees both failed to recuse themselves from the demotion hearing after Swanson said they both had conflicts of interest.
Swanson maintained that McIlroy “maliciously and in bad faith colluded and conspired” with Duffy over several months in an effort to remove the chief. The lawsuit maintained McIlroy had made prior negative comments about Swanson and his husband and had an “overt bias.”
Swanson also maintains Kahn should have stepped aside because he was involved in a road rage incident that was part of the case against the chief, the lawsuit said. Swanson had asked his husband to do a free legal review of the case, which had netted Kahn a traffic ticket, records show.
When Kahn’s actions became public, he responded by accusing the police chief of lying about pressuring to get the ticket dismissed, the lawsuit said.
New information
The lawsuit provides a few new items that had been unknown or unreported over the past 6 ½ months.
One new nugget in the lawsuit was that Blakeman, a Village Trustee, was reportedly behind the ejection of Swanson’s husband, Woodstock lawyer Nicholas “Nico” Seldon, and possibly three other spectators during a heated exchange at the demotion hearing.
The lawsuit said the “Defendant Village of Woodstock organized and orchestrated the logistics of the hearing in bad faith to keep public attendance to a minimum, to reduce media coverage, to prevent some members of the public from attending and to remove individuals (including Plaintiff’s husband, father-in-law, mother and sister) at the request of Defendant Blakeman for exhibiting silent facial expressions.”
There is some debate about how many people were actually asked to leave by Hearing Officer Brian Monaghan, who was hired by the trustees, and how many people left in protest for the ejection. Monaghan ordered Seldon to leave and his father offered support as voices were raised on both sides. Before it ended one of the departing spectators called the demotion hearing a “kangaroo court.”
The media had trouble seeing what actually led to the ejection because of the layout of the small windowless basement conference room with obstructing pillars at the Windsor County Sheriff’s Department. The trustees had opted not to hold the hearing at its regular public meeting room at the Woodstock Town Hall, which also has a 386-seat theater.
Also apparently new in the lawsuit was the disclosure about a Jan. 22 meeting between Duffy, Swanson and their lawyers during which, the police chief offered “to move forward in repairing all allegedly problematic relationships, to address issues which he was previously unaware, to return to work with his staff without resentment or retaliation, to correct any misperceptions surrounding his performance,” court records show.
Swanson also agreed to waive any civil lawsuit claims against Duffy, but the manager rejected the idea and indicated he wanted the plaintiff terminated as chief, court records show.
The lawsuit outlines how Duffy had secretly filed a complaint with the Vermont Criminal Justice Council seeking an investigation into professional misconduct and that he never disclosed his actions when asked.
Duffy also failed to notify Swanson or the press that the council, which had the Burgess report, ruled there was no unprofessional conduct, the lawsuit said.
The hearing
The lawsuit also maintains Swanson was never provided “with the identities of the alleged complainants or the nature of the complaints attributed to them until just prior” to the hearing on March 19.
Swanson and his lawyer, Fraas, have maintained Duffy tried to solicit complaints from members of the unions representing the police and the dispatchers.
Fraas argued that most of the complaints were frivolous, and Swanson did not deserve to lose the chief’s job. The complaints elicited by Duffy included mismatched socks, messy hair, overflowing trash cans and unwashed police cruiser, the lawsuit said.
The court papers noted that when Duffy asked for complaints initially, none of the employees filed anything in writing. It was only after Duffy hired Burgess to conduct interviews that employees filed complaints, the lawsuit said.
Duffy selected Swanson as the new police chief in July 2023 after a nationwide search. Retiring Police Chief Robbie Blish was among those supporting Swanson, who joined the department as a part-time officer in 2000 while in college, and became fulltime in 2007. He was promoted to corporal in 2013, sergeant in 2014 and won several awards, including after he was wounded in a shooting while trying to arrest a suspected killer.
The lawsuit said each defendant “has engaged in unlawful conduct that is outrageously reprehensible. It added that the claimed unlawful conduct was “due to their malice towards Plaintiff and ill will evidenced by personal spite or hatred in reckless disregard of Plaintiff’s legal rights.”
Various acts by Police Sgt. Christopher O’Keeffe, Chief Dispatcher Elizabeth Therrien and Police Administrative Assistant Michelle Sutherland were called out in the lawsuit, but they were not named as defendants.
O’Keeffe has been the acting police chief since mid-October when Duffy first placed Swanson on paid administrative leave following a traffic incident involving two vehicles on High Street.
Swanson was a passenger in one of the vehicles driven by Seldon. The Vermont State Police said their independent investigation showed no charges were warranted.
Duffy refused to return Swanson to active duty and instead proceeded with the internal investigation based on employee complaints.
Duffy testified at the hearing that he had given Swanson a positive employee evaluation for his one-year anniversary as chief in July 2024. Three months later Duffy started steps toward getting Swanson removed.