Town and Two Former Town Employees Sued for Defamation
Apparently, the Nottingham Board of Selectmen has not complied with the demand letter they received on December 20 from former Fire Chief Jaye Vilchock. Vilchock’s suit against the Town and two of its former employees was filed in Rockingham Superior Court on January 24. The full text of the complaint may be downloaded below.
The key points of the complaint are as follows.
Two now-former employees of the Nottingham Fire & Rescue Department conspired to intentionally assassinate Vilchock’s character for purposes of job protection and increased compensation. The former employees are Francis Bruno and Vash Rosfield a/k/a Vash Cupp, a/k/a Joshua Cupp a/k/a Joshua Brenten Cupp a/k/a Brent Cupp.
They decided to invent a story of Vilchock calling Bruno a slur for the express purpose of getting him terminated in the most humiliating way possible.
Vilchock was terminated without any opportunity to respond to the investigator’s report prior to his termination.
At Vilchock’s RSA 154:5 hearing, he learned for the first time that these former employees of the NFRD had defamed him in the course of their complaints to the Town’s Board of Selectmen, accusing him of using bigoted language.
The board said in its termination letter, which was made public, that Vilchock’s
….conduct outlined in the [report generated by the investigator] implicates. . . Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits sexual harassment, retaliation, and discrimination on the basis of national origin, sexual orientation, and race. . .the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination and retaliation of employees with disabilities. . . NH RSA 354-A, which prohibits retaliation and discrimination on the basis of gender identity, race, national origin, disability , and sexual orientation. . .
Bruno made his defamatory statement in the context where (a) he had recently been denied his requested raise by Vilchock, in his role as Chief, and (b) Vilchock had cited him a number of times for poor performance. Shortly after being cited for performance issues, Bruno told Vilchock that Vilchock was “lucky” that Bruno had not already gone to the Board of Selectmen.
The Town is liable for Bruno and Rosfield’s defamatory statements under the doctrine of respondeat superior.
The Town is also liable under the doctrine of ratification, an alternate theory of holding an employer liable for the torts of its employees, insomuch as neither the Town nor its investigator ever told Vilchock what he was accused of having said. Vilchock had to wait until his hearing to learn what exactly he was alleged to have said to Bruno and Rosfield, when Rosfield testified to the substance of the invented story.
The Town also made defamatory factual representations in its letter terminating Vilchock, to the effect that his “conduct” had “implicated” a host of federal and state statutes prohibiting, broadly speaking, illegal discrimination on the basis of protected characteristics. “Implicates” means, in this context, “to show (someone) to be involved in a crime.” The Town’s representations on this point mere opinions derived from the factual bases set forth in the investigator’s report. The Town’s termination letter purports to rely upon the report for its conclusion, even as the report specifically declined to make findings under the laws the termination letter cites. The Town cannot claim a factual basis for the representation it made on the basis of a document that does not provide such a basis.
A jury trial is demanded.
