Court Slams City of Medford's Baseless Lawsuit Against Fire Fighters, Affirms Arbitration Victory

Attorneys Leah Barrault and Ian Russell persuaded an arbitrator that the City of Medford's redistribution of certain Deputy Chief overtime vacancies violated the collective bargaining agreement with Medford Fire Fighters Union, Local 1032, IAFF. The arbitrator agreed that the reassignment of these vacancies to a single captain - rather than based on seniority of captains from the appropriate work group - violated the past practice enshrined in the contract. Barrault and Russell then persuaded the Middlesex Superior Court to toss out the City's legal challenge to the Award for being practically frivolous. The Court agreed in full with Local 1032.

The City made multiple errors throughout its litigation. Prior to the arbitration, the City filed a civil complaint to stop an arbitration hearing from even being held. But the City never filed the right papers to enable the Court to even consider staying the arbitration, let alone actually putting a stop to it.

During the arbitration, the City claimed that the arbitrator lacked jurisdiction over the grievance. But the City never asked the arbitrator to address this concern. So the arbitrator ignored it. After the arbitration, the City never filed a timely complaint to vacate (or, in other words, reverse) the arbitrator's award.

Despite these major legal errors, the City asked the Court to "stay" the arbitration that already concluded and to rule that the arbitrator lacked jurisdiction to hear the grievance.

The Court easily dismissed the City's belated motion to stay. As the judge wrote, "This Court cannot stay, postpone, halt or suspend an arbitration that as already occurred." The Court then rejected the City's other theory to challenge the award, because the City again failed to file the correct papers to challenge the award. The Court ignored the merits of the City's arguments because the City fundamentally disregarded basic court procedure.

The Judge then effectively affirmed the Union's arbitration victory as a default because the City's legal strategy involved ignoring "clear statutory directives" about how to attack an arbitration award.