The Smoking Gun in Newmarket:

By Jeffrey Thomas Clay

A rigorous review of the Newmarket Town Charter, combined with a devastating admission preserved in open-court transcript records, exposes a coordinated, systemic deception. The facts demonstrate a dual-layered violation of municipal law and judicial ethics: first, the Town Manager lacked any constitutional or charter-based authority to enter into a settlement agreement with a non-employee; second, attorneys from Donahue, Tucker & Ciandella (DTC) possessed absolute knowledge that the Town Council—not the manager—was pulling the strings behind closed doors via illicit email channels, yet they actively chose to conceal this from the courts until cornered on the record.

I. The "Work Done" Limitation: The Manager’s Strict Lack of Authority
The Newmarket Town Charter strictly defines and limits the operational scope of the Town Manager. While many New Hampshire municipalities grant broad, generalized contracting powers to their chief administrators, Newmarket’s Charter binds the manager to an explicitly narrow lane.

The Charter dictates that the Town Manager can only independently execute contracts for work or services performed for the town (such as hiring contractors for public works, purchasing administrative supplies, or managing municipal employment).

During the March 28, 2024, Superior Court hearing, this structural barrier was brought directly before Judge Andrew Schulman. The argument pinned the town to its own charter:

"The town charter specifically limits his ability, his power to contract to sign a contract for work done for the town, period... It does not allow him to sign a settlement agreement."

A legal settlement agreement with an outside citizen or advocate is a release of liability and a commitment of public funds that falls completely outside the definition of "work done for the town". Because the target of this agreement never worked for the municipality, the Town Manager had zero independent contractual capacity to execute it. Acting outside this explicit boundary renders the contract an ultra vires act—completely void from inception.

II. The Transcript Admission: Breaking the Narrative and Waiving Privilege
For months, DTC and town leadership maintained a calculated narrative: presenting the agreement to the court as a routine administrative action lawfully executed by the Town Manager, while hiding the underlying communications under a false shield of attorney-client privilege. However, as captured on pages 45–46 of the official hearing transcript, DTC Attorney John Ratigan completely blew his own firm’s narrative apart.

Ratigan admitted out loud to Judge Schulman exactly how the contract was actually approved:

MR. RATIGAN: "I used the attorney-client privilege. I communicated an email to the town manager to communicate that requesting him to communicate the settlement agreement to members of the town counsel and get their input as to whether or not they believe that this was sued. And so he did so, and he returned their input to me... And that was the source of authority for the settlement agreement to go through."

This admission is devastating to the town’s position for two fatal reasons:

It Proves the Right-to-Know Violation: It confirms that the Town Council was the actual entity authorizing the contract, but they did so entirely through an asynchronous, unrecorded electronic backchannel rather than a formal vote in a properly noticed session as required by NH RSA 91-A:3.

It Waives the Privilege: A law firm cannot claim an email chain is an inviolable, top-secret legal communication to shield it from an opponent or a Right-to-Know inquiry, and then stand up in open court and describe its operational contents to justify how a contract was authorized.

III. The Contract as a Weaponized Shield
The transcript further reveals that the town’s refusal to answer Right-to-Know requests had nothing to do with legitimate statutory exemptions. They never even reached the stage of justifying document withholdings. As Judge Schulman summarized on pages 52–53, the town attempted to use this highly suspect settlement agreement as an absolute gag order to strip away constitutional rights:

THE COURT: "So we're not dealing with a claimed attorney-client privilege exemption. We're dealing with a claim argument that the contract forbids you from making the request. We haven't gotten past that point yet."

IV. The Out-of-State Diversion: Shamed by the Court
Left exposed by the reality of their backchannel emails and charter violations, DTC attorneys attempted a desperate late-stage maneuver to disqualify the advocate entirely. Attorney Briana Matuszko handed the court a copy of McBurney v. Young (569 U.S. 221), pointing to a footnote survey to argue that because the petitioner now lived in Florida, he had no standing to file New Hampshire Right-to-Know requests.

Judge Schulman thoroughly rejected this attempt to rewrite RSA 91-A based on out-of-state residency:

THE COURT: "My thought has always been I could be somebody living in Nome, Alaska, and if, for no reason in the world, in my retirement, I wanted to write the definitive history of the Town of Newmarket, I could make 91 requests just as if I lived there. I don't think that it's a law that applies only to people who are citizens of New Hampshire."

Caught in a blatant misapplication of the law, Attorney Ratigan was forced to completely surrender the point on the record, stating simply, "I agree with that analysis."

V. Conclusion: Fraud on the Tribunal
The March 28, 2024, transcript provides unassailable proof of a systemic municipal cover-up. The Town Manager signed an agreement he had no Charter authority to touch. The Town Council illegally directed and approved the action behind a shield of unrecorded emails. And DTC attorneys, acting as officers of the court, weaponized a fraudulent privilege claim to hide the paper trail from the Ombudsman and the judiciary until their own admissions forced the truth into the light.

When a public body and its highly paid attorneys hide their own governing charter and fabric of execution to mislead a court of law, it ceases to be a mere legal strategy—it becomes an institutional fraud on the judicial system and a total betrayal of the public trust.