The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
GOP pair seek fee coverage
2nd lawsuit aims for Bysiewicz, others who defended Miller
BROOKFIELD — A pair of Brookfield Republicans are trying again to have their legal expenses covered for a 2016 case in which the town declined to represent them.
This time, they’re suing a group of lawyers — including Susan Bysiewicz, the former secretary of the state and current Democratic candidate for governor — who represented Jane Miller in the original case, which was ultimately dismissed. Miller is named as a defendant in the new case.
Matt Grimes, former chairman of the Brookfield Republican Town Committee, and George Walker, the former vice chairman of the committee, allege Bysiewicz knew the original case would be dismissed when she persuaded the town not to pay for defense counsel, causing Grimes and Walker to pay out of pocket for their lawyers.
“Bysiewicz claimed credit for having
(the city’s insurer) rescind its decision to pay for defense counsel,” according to the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in state Superior Court in Hartford. “As a consequence ... (Walker and Grimes) was obliged to engage the services of an attorney to represent him in the lawsuit.”
“We believe that the current case that has been filed does not have merit because the case we filed (in 2016) did,” Bysiewicz said on Friday.
In the original case, filed in February 2016, Miller sued Grimes, Walker and the Brookfield Registrar of Voters for conspiring to remove her from the Republican Party voting rolls.
The suit sought more than $1 million and argued her removal from the party violated her constitutional rights by denying her ability to vote in the presidential primary and other Republican elections.
In July 2016, the new GOP Registrar of Voters let Miller back into the party, but Miller still missed the opportunity to vote in the Republican presidential primary, which Bysiewicz argued was a civil rights violation.
In the original case, filed in February 2016, Miller sued Grimes, Walker and the Brookfield Registrar of Voters for conspiring to remove her from the Republican Party voting rolls.
A federal judge dismissed the case in March 2017. The state Superior, Appellate and Supreme courts all ruled Grimes and former Republican Registrar of Voters Thomas Dunkerton acted within the law, based on a rarely used statute that allowed them to remove Miller because they said her unsuccessful run for the Board of Finance in 2013, as an unaffiliated candidate endorsed by the Democrats, meant she was not loyal to the Republican party.
Kirk Tavtigian, the attorney representing Grimes and Walker in the new case, did not immediately return calls to comment.