Herbst Family Legal Battle Continues With New Lawsuit

TRUMBULL, CT — First Selectman Tim Herbst's mother has sued her daughter, son-in-law and their lawyer. She alleges in the lawsuit that the three conspired to take confidential information off her iPhone.

Herbst was sued by his brother-in-law Jesse Jablon last year. Jablon alleged that Herbst fired him from his town position and interfered with his efforts to obtain employment after he began dating Herbst's sister. He also alleged in the lawsuit that Herbst told an employee at Enterprise Car Sales that Jablon was a drug dealer in an effort to get him fired. The lawsuit is continuing in federal court.

Herbst is aiming for the Republican nomination for governor. He decided to focus his efforts on that goal instead of running for first selectman again.

Herbst's mother Deborah Herbst claimed in the lawsuit that Jablon, her daughter and lawyer John Williams accessed her iPhone without permission to gather messages between her and third parties.

"Knowing it would be distressing to the Plaintiff, the Defendants published and caused to be published the Plaintiff's personal private communications, disseminated copies of the communications to third persons, and, commented on the Plaintiff's personal private data to the public news media," her lawyer stated in a lawsuit.

Deborah Herbst is seeking an unspecified amount of monetary and punitive damages. She learned that the communications were disseminated by Williams during discovery of the other lawsuit.

Tim Herbst previously denied interfering with Jablon's job search and said that emails showed that he wasn't hired for an information technology job because he wasn't qualified. He also stood by his decision to fire Jablon due to a conflict of interest in having his sister's boyfriend work in his administration.