Thomas Breen file photo
Former union prez Frank Ricci: Looking to preserve pension bump signed off on by 3 mayors.
The trial date for a five-year-old lawsuit filed by the Board of Alders against the Elicker administration over the former fire union president’s pension deal has been pushed back amid a request to have a judge dismiss the case on the grounds that, legally, the city can’t sue itself.
The lawsuit dates back to July 2020. It concerns a $386,659 pension enhancement for retired fire union President Frank Ricci that was approved by Mayor Justin Elicker during the latter’s first year in office.
The Board of Alders has argued that the city’s payment of this annuity violates a local law that requires all contracts worth at least $100,000 to first be approved by the city’s legislature. The mayor has responded that the city was legally required to make the extra retirement payments because of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) first signed in 2006 between the DeStefano administration and the fire union, then amended in 2019 by the Harp administration to specifically provide for Ricci.
After almost five years and multiple state court hearings, this case was finally slated to go to trial on May 14.
Until May 2, that is, when Ricci and co-defendant Christine Ricci, his wife, filed a motion to dismiss. They argue that the whole case should be scrapped because — well, the Board of Alders is a part of the City of New Haven, and the city cannot legally sue itself. The alders’ lawyers have disagreed, arguing that this matter has already been resolved by a previous court order, that the local legislature does have the right to file such lawsuits to enforce local laws, and that the case should proceed. (While the case’s main defendant is the City of New Haven, the Riccis are also listed as co-defendants, as they are the beneficiaries of the pension bump at the center of the dispute.)
The case appeared on the state court’s “short calendar” on Tuesday for scheduling purposes. As of Wednesday, it now has a new hearing date, June 6, when the different parties will get to argue before a judge as to why the lawsuit should or should not be dismissed.
Depending on how the judge rules on that motion, the case could then go on to trial.
In the May 2 motion to dismiss, the Riccis’ attorney, Eric Brown, argues that the plaintiff, the Board of Alders, and the defendant, the City of New Haven, “are one and the same for purposes of standing.”
“They are not distinct political entities, but rather the plaintiff is a body that is a part of the defendant municipality itself,” the motion continues. “As such, the plaintiff has no authority or standing to sue the defendant, because the suit amounts to the same party suing itself. Because the plaintiff lacks standing to sue, the court does not have jurisdiction over the subject matter of the complaint and the complaint must be dismissed.”
The Riccis note that they raised a similar jurisdictional argument in a motion for summary judgment in April 2024. State Superior Court Judge Angelica Nicolette Papastavros denied that motion in December 2024 in a “one-sentence order that did not address the jurisdictional claim raised by the Ricci defendants,” as the Riccis put it.
This jurisdictional question has never been decided, they argue, and so a judge must weigh in on this “threshold issue” before the case can move forward.
In the “Argument” section of the May 2 motion to dismiss, the Riccis make their case for why the Board of Alders “is not a body politic separate and distinct from the municipality itself.” State statute Sec. 7 – 193 states that “the municipality shall have a legislative body,” the motion quotes. That means the legislative body — in this case, the Board of Alders — is part of, and not separate from, the municipality, i.e. the City of New Haven.
“The Connecticut legislature has granted the power to sue and be sued to each ‘municipality’ generally,” through state statute 7 – 148(c)(1). “The legislature has not granted that power to a municipality’s legislative body separate and apart from the municipality itself.”
Therefore, the motion concludes, the court does not have jurisdiction over the claims by the Board of Alders, and so the lawsuit should be dismissed in its entirety.
On May 9, attorneys Jonathan Einhorn and Steve Mednick, two former alders who are representing the Board of Alders in this case, filed a four-page objection to the Riccis’ motion to dismiss.
They noted that “almost on the eve of trial,” the Riccis moved to dismiss the lawsuit on “the exact same grounds” that they had previously raised and that were previously denied in the December 2024 court order by Judge Papastavros.
The Board of Alders’ attorneys note that, indeed, the court order from December 2024 did not discuss this particular issue of the Riccis’ concerns. But the Riccis “never requested that the Court articulate or clarify its decision” and “no appeal was taken.”
Mednick and Einhorn argue that the Riccis’ motion to dismiss — repeating a previously stated legal argument, coming five years after the lawsuit was initially filed — “is the very definition of dilatory. The net result of this filing was that trial was unnecessarily delayed.”
The alders’ lawyers reference a June 2024 court filing in which they laid out their legal argument for why the Board of Alders does have standing to sue the City of New Haven in this case.
“The Defendant overlooks the organization of the City of New Haven pursuant to its charter,” Einhorn and Mednick wrote in 2024. “The Board of Alders is not merely an agency of the City: it is a separate and distinct governmental authority. It is akin to a separate branch of government at the federal or state levels of government. It has a separate legal existence.”
They then point to Article IV of the City Charter, which sets forth the “authority, power and duties” of the Board of Alders as the city’s legislature. “Without the ability to institute litigation and enforce the law as embodied in the Charter and Ordinances, these powers would be toothless,” the alders’ lawyers write. “In effect, denying the Board of Alders the authority to sue to defend its actions or to try to enforce the balance of authority between the chief elected official and [legislature] would render the actions of the legislative body a nullity.”
They also note that, under Section 4 of the City Charter, the alders have the power to enforce penalties for violation of city ordinances “by a civil action or forthwith process as in criminal cases.” This present lawsuit is an example of just such a civil action, they state.
Mednick and Einhorn then note that state law is “replete” with examples of lawsuits brought by the New Haven Board of Alders and other municipal legislatures.
“Contrary to Defendants’ claims, the Plaintiff is not suing itself and Defendant has presented no caselaw to support that bold assertion,” they conclude in their June 2024 filing.
And so, in their May 9 filing from this year, the alders’ lawyers argue, “The Defendants [the Riccis] should not have two bites of the same apple, and in so doing cause trial to be delayed.” The Riccis’ motion to dismiss should be denied, they argue, and trial should be rescheduled as soon as possible.