Boston and former Mayor Marty Walsh stay enmeshed in an costly set of dueling lawsuits with a former library janitorial supervisor as town continues to be seeking to clear up the mess left by an extra time scandal from a bunch of janitors in 2018.
The two parallel fits, that are costing town a whole bunch of hundreds of {dollars}, lay out — “Roshomon“-style — totally different takes on what occurred within the scandal on the Boston Public Library’s central location at Copley Square.
Library custodial supervisor Michael Durfee, of Braintree, departed after the kerfuffle that made headlines in 2018. In his telling, per the lawsuit criticism he filed in August 2020, he was roughly minding his personal enterprise after 15 years within the library’s custodial department when an investigation into one in all his subordinates opened up a Pandora’s field.
Durfee checked right into a criticism {that a} custodian had introduced a “female companion” into the placing library constructing earlier than his extra time shift began and famous that the employee left his midnight to eight a.m. shift very early — at 1:30 a.m. The man allegedly volunteered, in accordance with Durfee’s criticism, “that he would end his overtime shift for the private event once his work was complete even if it was before 8 a.m.”
From there, what Durfee’s criticism refers to because the “Overtime Practice” fell into place because it turned clear that this was the norm — staff would keep for so long as the work took after which depart, however declare the entire shift.
Durfee — who in his criticism acknowledged that he “took part in the Overtime Practice when he was a custodian” — then outlined a gathering with then-top metropolis lawyer Eugene O’Flaherty at Castle Island in Southie after which one in Walsh’s workplace after information broke of the problems. There, Durfee says, the mayor instructed him he needed to resign or be fired — and likewise instructed him he was being “too honest” concerning the “Overtime Practice.”
Durfee mentioned that that’s when he cued town in on an alleged rip-off — one which he says he didn’t participate in — that the janitors had been working on the swanky non-public occasions on the library. He mentioned workers would declare extra sources than wanted to wash up the occasions after which the surplus cash would disappear to “some unknown purpose.”
Durfee sued and alleges that town violated the whistleblower statute, wrongfully fired him and violated his civil rights. He’s searching for financial damages from town.
As the lawsuit criticism wrapped up, he acquired within the jab that “Under the Martin J. Walsh Administration, City of Boston employees that were indicted on extortion and conspiracy charges were paid while on leave,” whereas he was not.
But Walsh and Boston see all of it a bit in another way, in a single submitting calling this an “utterly frivolous lawsuit.”
The metropolis’s counterclaim denied that there was ever an “Overcharging Practice” for individuals internet hosting non-public occasions — as there’s only a flat price assessed to pay the custodians who work the occasion with any extra cash going to the library.
And due to this fact, metropolis outdoors counsel Brian T. Kelly wrote, there’s nothing to blow a whistle on relating to the non-public occasions, as nobody was charged extra moreover the library.
“Without a hint of irony, Plaintiff claims that he is a whistleblower because, during a City investigation of the overtime fraud, he admitted to stealing time,” Kelly continued. “In other words, his whistleblower claim is that he blew the whistle on himself and that this entitles him to damages from the City that he stole from for nearly 15 years.”
The metropolis’s countersuing in an effort to make Durfee pay its authorized prices — and to recoup the cash town claims he owes for his participation in what Kelly calls the “Overtime Scheme.”
Durfee’s legal professional, Christopher Bulens, didn’t reply to a message searching for touch upon Friday. Neither did Kelly.
Kelly, a former federal prosecutor who’s a daily metropolis contractor, has acquired round $460,000 from town over the previous two years for “Coordinating Response Inquires, Durfee v. COB,” in accordance with metropolis information, together with $363,629 in fiscal yr 2022, which wrapped up in June.
Filings on this case have continued as lately as this week as either side fired missives forwards and backwards over whether or not the decide ought to put protections in place across the inner library monetary paperwork town has to supply.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”