Thomas Breen photo
Judge Abrams conducting the hybrid physical-virtual status conference Monday.
The facts of the case are pretty clear. What remains in question is who was right, who was wrong, and whether the city needs to find a way to put “toothpaste back in the tube.”
Those words were heard — if not necessarily spoken — in a fourth-floor state courtroom as a lawsuit filed by New Haven alders against the mayor regarding fire union President Frank Ricci’s extra retirement benefits moved ahead.
That 10-minute legal status conference took place Monday afternoon before state Superior Court Judge James Abrams in an all-but-empty fourth-floor court room at 235 Church St.
The procedural hearing was the first to take place before a judge in the case Board of Alders v. City of New Haven.
Now-retired former fire union president Frank Ricci.
The Board of Alders has sued the city and Mayor Justin Elicker for striking an agreement with recently-retired fire union president Frank Ricci that requires the city to pay for a $386,659.92 annuity on top of Ricci’s existing pension benefits. The suit was first reported Sunday by the New Haven Register’s Mary O’Leary.
The alders and their attorneys argued in the suit that the mayor circumvented city law by agreeing to a contract worth more than $100,000 without first securing approval from the local legislative body.
In an email statement put out Monday, the mayor replied that the city is legally required to make the extra retirement payments to the now-retired fire union leader because of an accord first agreed to by the DeStefano Administration in 2006 and amended in 2019by the Harp administration to specifically provide for Ricci.
“The 2006 agreement to increase the Union Leadership’s pension payment was, in my opinion, unfortunate and not something I would have supported, nor something of the nature I would support today,” Elicker is quoted as saying in the release. “Nevertheless, after review by City staff, including Corporation Counsel and the Pension Fund attorney, we are required to honor the agreements made and therefore have made the payment. While I do not believe the original agreement was a wise one, as leader of the City, I need to follow through on the City’s legal commitments – past and present.”
Click here for background on the case, and here to read the original June 29 complaint in full.
Only three people were physically present in Courtroom 4D Monday: Judge Abrams, one of his clerks, and this reporter.
Empty tables where the plaintiff and defense attorneys would normally sit …
… Instead, they videoconferenced in remotely.
The case’s two plaintiff attorneys, Jonathan Einhorn and Steve Mednick, and its three defense attorneys, Floyd Dugas, Paula Anthony, and Marshall Segar, all video-conferenced in to the hearing, so as to minimize the risk of spreading Covid-19.
The court system has been partially closed since the start of the pandemic in mid-March. As the state’s infection and hospitalization rate has declined in recent weeks, the court system slowly started transitioning from hearing only Priority 1 cases to hearing a greater diversity of cases, including civil cases like Monday’s.
Abrams showed up in person — black robe and all — and sat alongside one of his clerks. He had a box of tissues on his bench, and emerged from his chambers wearing a face mask and gloves (he took those off during the hearing itself). Two plastic partitions separated him from his clerk, who sat roughly six feet away.
This reporter also showed up in the flesh because the state judicial system, per Judge Abrams’s explanation, cannot yet accommodate reporters and members of the public tuning in remotely for remote hearings. (U.S. District Court Judge Janet Hall, by contrast, has held publicly viewable Zoom hearings since early in the pandemic.)
This reporter sat six feet away from the judge and watched his screen and listened to his conversation with the attorneys as Abrams parsed through a few procedural matters before the case advances to a more substantive, evidentiary hearing later this month.
Einhorn, like Mednick a former Westville alder, said that the facts of the case are pretty simple. “We’re looking for injunctive relief to stop what we believe is an illegal contract, a contract that wasn’t approved by the Board of Alders, as required by the ordinances of the city. That’s very very simple nutshell of the case.”
He said that his client — the Board of Alders — seeks to “stop this annuity contract from occurring, or at least as much of it as possible.”
Abrams (pictured) asked if the case can proceed along an “ordinary course” for such a matter — with the clerk’s office assigning a date for an evidentiary hearing in the next few weeks. He pointed out that the initial injunction application asked for a hearing to take place before July 4, since that was Ricci’s official retirement date.
“We didn’t know if he was going to start receiving his pension immediately on that date, or two days later,” Einhorn said about the reason for the request for a hearing before Independence Day.
“He could get his first payment and it wouldn’t be the end of the world, but we’d like to do this sooner rather than later.”
Will there be a significant amount of documentary evidence submitted in this case? Abrams asked.
Probably not, Einhorn replied. The facts of the case — regarding the signing of the agreement with Ricci and the city’s payment to Met Life for the full amount of the annuity — will likely be agreed to by both sides. The outstanding questions will likely be purely legal. That is: Did the mayor and the city’s executive branch violate local law when they struck the agreement and made the payment?
Dugas agreed. “I think the main concerns, the main acts have already happened,” he said. “It’s just a question, legally, of who was right and who was wrong, and if there’s anything to stop putting toothpaste back in the tube.”
Abrams said that the court system is “probably about 10 days away from being able to handle a hearing remotely with significant documentary evidence.” He said that the two sides should receive a follow up date from the clerk’s office soon to determine when this case will next appear before the court.
Ricci, meanwhile, released a statement about the case, which he called a “pretext” for alders to obtain “final retribution” for his Supreme Court promotion case “and other protected activity.” He said alders and “their surrogates” have attacked him, including by releasing confidential medical information on Facebook. “I am confident my rights will be vindicated,” he said.