Ousted Deputy Town Clerk Sues to Get Her Job Back

The town’s former Deputy Town Clerk who was fired abruptly in February wants her job back and is suing her former boss and the town of Portsmouth.

Patricia Cofield, a longtime town employee, filed the lawsuit in Newport County Superior Court on March 16 and is alleging her due process rights were violated when she was fired without warning. She also claims the Family Medical Leave Act and Rhode Island Workers Compensation Act were violated when she was threatened with termination if she took time off for an injury she suffered at work.

In the lawsuit, Cofield is asking the court to grant a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to get her job back with back pay and benefits, prevent further threat of termination and be awarded costs and legal fees.

Cofield’s termination compelled the Portsmouth Town Council in February to start the process of conducting an operational audit of town administrative functions, including the clerk’s office, after increasing friction between Town Clerk Joanne Mower and Cofield finally culminated in the firing. Town Councilman James Seveney said that council members felt like they were in the dark and took issue with the sudden firing of a longtime town employee.

Cofield alleges that she was “subjected to repeated and verbal harassment and abuse by Ms. Mower” and believed that Mower felt she was able to fire Cofield at her whim “with no notice or cause and without the most basic of employment rights or due process.”

In the spring of 2004, Cofield told Mower about an injury to her arm that she suffered at work. Mower then “threatened Mrs. Cofield that if she went out on workers’ compensation, she wouldn’t have a job to come back to.”

Fearing for her job, Cofield did not file a workers compensation claim, according to the lawsuit.

Later, in the summer, Cofield sought medical help for work-related stress. When Mower was told that a doctor said she should take four weeks of medical leave, “Mower again told her that if she took such leave, she wouldn’t have a job to come back to.”

SEE: After Abrupt Firing of Deputy Town Clerk, Council Wants Answers

In December, Cofield told Mower that she needed surgery on her arm and it eventually was scheduled for Feb. 25. On Feb. 6, Cofield emailed her surgery instructions to Mower. The next monday, Feb. 9, Cofield was fired.

Cofield’s lawyers argue in the suit that the Town Clerk does not have “unfettered discretion to terminate her employment” and the Town Council is not powerless to stop such a termination.

One argument rests on the fact that as Deputy Town Clerk, unlike the elected Town Clerk position, Cofield was a classified employee, according to Portsmouth’s town charter. That would give her notice and hearing rights as well as a right to appeal her termination before a personnel board.

In fact, the lawsuit alleges, Cofield never received any written or formal warnings and was fired without any due process.

“If the action of the town is allowed to stand un-remedied at this stage, it will be an open invitation to such towns to violate their employees’ rights and hope time will wear down any disgruntled employee who attempts to challenge such illegal acts,” the lawsuit states.

Town officials aren’t commenting on the lawsuit.

The case was transferred to U.S. District Court upon request of the town, which argued that the due process claims are covered by the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment.