Rebuttal to Attorney Bolton’s explanation for failure to deliver emails - July 28, 2021 Telegraph Article.

The Telegraph published an article regarding the Court order to pay my legal expenses for disregarding a discovery request to obtain emails from Director Kleiner relevant to a 2020 Right-to-Know lawsuit.

The request made in July 2020 was for specific time and content emails from a single person. Kim Kleiner’s emails, relative to assessing, sent from August 9 through September 30, 2019. This was not an extensive search.

Attorney Bolton offered explanations to the Telegraph that were not part of the City’s objection to my Attorney’s motion for sanctions. Apparently, given enough time, he’s able to fabricate more absurd excuses to explain the City’s bad faith.

According to Attorney Bolton, the reasons for disregarding the discovery:

·      COVID

·      City Hall Renovations

·      Employees working remotely

·      No employees available to conduct searches

COVID is a pandemic political excuse with little relevance to searching for emails. No City employees were furloughed; in fact, Ms. Kleiner assured the public that employees were working at 100%. The record search required the employee time of Ms. Kleiner and someone from the IT Department.

Kleiner’s office and the IT Department were not under renovations. Ms. Kleiner’s offices was open to the public throughout the pandemic without an appointment.

This request was a computer driven search, so Ms. Kleiner should have been able to compile her emails from home and the IT department regularly had a worker in City Hall.

We paid the IT employed full time salaries; someone was available to conduct the search.

He concluded by telling the Telegraph

·      Ultimately it was discovered that the backup storage system failed and the emails were lost.

·      We had over 100 requests we had to deal with.

According to Attorney Bolton’s May 13, 2021 Objection filed with the Court against our request for sanctions,

“Following the plaintiff’s RFPD, the City engaged in a timely search for the requested emails. Early on in this process it was discovered that emails from the month of September 2019 were unobtainable due to file corruption.” (emphasis added – RFPD, Request for Production of Documents)

Apparently employees were available to conduct searches and knew early on. From July through December, Attorney Leonard chose to string us along telling us the emails were being compiled and reviewed. 

Attorney Bolton’s statement that they had over 100 requests to deal with is simply unverifiable because the legal office claims Right-to-Know requests are attorney-client privilege material, which means that they can make up any number they wish. 

The legal office set up an expensive, time consuming process to handle requests (this appeared to be targeted to only certain citizens) when departments were capable of filling the request in a timelier and cost effective manner. This inefficient process was being used as an excuse for failing to deliver on legal discovery.

Attorney Bolton has been very harsh to describe me and some in the Aldermanic Chamber as “liars”. It would appear Attorney Bolton is fabricating facts and misrepresenting the issues. It is disturbing that a municipal attorney representing right-to-know challenges in a civil matter can operate in such an uncivil and hostile manner. Bully tactics. This is an embarrassment to City Hall and Nashua residents.

Attorney Bolton serves at the pleasure of the Mayor and is paid the highest salary funded by taxpayers. It’s time for a new Corporation Council.