Judge tries to grasp Fire Department complaint

02/19/2004

Tara York , Register Staff

HARTFORD — State Supreme Court Chief Justice William J. Sullivan, as he often does, used sports Wednesday as an analogy to understand a longtime dispute over hiring practices in the New Haven Fire Department. Suppose a football coach auditions sophomores from home, but allows outside students to participate in the tryouts.

And suppose that at the end of the day, the coach chooses only the home players anyway.

Sullivan asked, were the chosen players harmed simply because outsiders competed, too?

Attorney W. Martyn Philpot Jr., who represents six current and former firefighters, says yes.

A dispute over a hiring practice in the Fire Department known as "underfilling" was taken to the state Supreme Court Wednesday.

The city Fire Department in 1996 had several vacancies for captains and lieutenants, but because of a backlog in the captain’s exam, there was no list of candidates ready to chose from for those positions.

There was, however, a list of lieutenant candidates, so they beefed up those commanding ranks instead, through "underfilling." In 1998, the Fire Department had 58 lieutenants even though the Board of Aldermen budget only allowed for 48.

Through underfilling, the city funded the extra lieutenant spots with the money from the vacant captain and battalion chief positions.

A Superior Court judge ruled that underfilling violated the city charter, but stopped short of ordering the city to nullify the promotions and demote the lieutenants.

Philpot’s clients want the higher court to force the city to demote the lieutenants who were underfilled.

There was no ruling Wednesday, but the panel repeatedly asked questions to understand how the plaintiffs were harmed.

Even though two of the plaintiffs in the case — Lt. Sheryl Broadnax and Lt. Christopher Texeira — were promoted during this process anyway and benefited from the underfilling, their lawsuit asks the court to force the demotions, saying it’s simply an unfair practice.

But city attorney Martin Echter Wednesday questioned why the plaintiffs didn’t object to the underfilling until two years after it happened.

While Texeira benefited from a promotion during the underfilling, he would have been promoted eventually anyway because he was at the top of the candidate list of lieutenants.

"The whole crux of the (plaintiffs’) claim was that the pool of applicants was so diluted, it made the playing field so unfair," Philpot said.