Open Letter to the New Hampshire Supreme Court

New Hampshire Supreme Court

Greetings,

The purpose of this brief letter is to call your attention to the unethical, immoral, and criminal actions of Newmarket School District Attorney Barbara Loughman. The acts committed by Attorney Loughman included lying to the NH Supreme Court on multiple occasions to protect her client, Newmarket School District, and to obtain an award of attorney fees.

I am fully aware that you have no authority to take action against Attorney Loughman. However, it is important you know there are attorneys, like Loughman, willing to commit crimes and lie to the Courts. This fact saddens me, as I hope it does you.

Attorney Loughman has been perpetrating great frauds upon New Hampshire Courts since 2016 by knowingly and purposefully lying to the courts to hide violations of RSA 91-A committed by her client, the Newmarket School District. In doing so, Attorney Loughman has disgraced herself, her law firm, and the entire legal profession.

Attorney Loughman has repeatedly informed NH Courts that the 2015 superintendent search committee appointed by the Newmarket School Board and composed of Al Zink, Kim Shelton, Arlon Chaffee, Graig Dionne, and Clay Mitchell never met: This was a lie. This committee held meetings from November 5th through the 8th, 2015.

I call your attention to the 12/17/2015 video of the Newmarket school board meeting. In this video, Al Zink informs everyone that the search committee did hold meetings from November 5th through the 8th, 2015, and detailed what they did and how they passed along their recommendations to the screening committee.

Attorney Loughman has also repeatedly lied to NH Courts claiming the 2015 superintendent screening committee sealed the nonpublic meeting minutes of their meetings. Fact: this Committee never sealed any nonpublic minutes. Three members of that committee have each stated so.

As you can imagine, attorney Loughman has had to make-up numerous other lies to cover up her lies to the courts as things progressed, including that the screening committee's nonpublic minutes remain sealed (a felony under RSA 641 as criminal investigations were underway).

Loughman’s lies, on behalf of the Newmarket school district, have cost Newmarket taxpayers more than one hundred thousand dollars in misappropriated legal fees. Essentially, Loughman has been collecting legal fees to hide her own criminal acts.

I have filed several complaints over these past years against Attorney Loughman with the NH Supreme Court Discipline office only to receive the same boilerplate response and refusal to Docket. This is also a shame as it has allowed Loughman to continue to violate the Code of Professional Conduct.

In conclusion, the attorney profession has bad actors. Barbara Loughman is a glaring example of the worst. I cannot change the attorney profession. The changes have to be made from within. I strongly urge all attorneys to demand a more robust investigation into allegations of attorney misconduct at the attorney disciple office.

Regards,

Jeffrey Thomas Clay, M.Ed.