Superior Court upholds vacation payout ruling in Laconia schools labor dispute

LACONIA — Superior Court Judge Mark Attorri affirmed a state labor board decision that found the Laconia School District owed a former employee for unused vacation time after she was fired. The labor board found found Christine Blouin was terminated not for breach of contract, but rather to settle a score with the superintendent.

Blouin, who was business administrator for the district until her termination in spring 2022, is owed $68,000 in unused vacation time and damages, affirmed Attorri in his decision published May 9.

Blouin began working for the district in 2016. Her claim, which has now been affirmed three times, is that her termination was retaliation on the part of Superintendent Steve Tucker for her participation in an investigation into complaints against him.

The district’s position is that Blouin was in “material breach” of her contract, in that she behaved unprofessionally in the workplace and conducted herself outside work in a manner that reflected poorly on the district.

After her termination, Blouin filed a complaint with the Department of Labor, which initially found all evidence presented by the school district was collected after she was fired, bolstering Blouin’s case that her firing was retaliatory. The district appealed, and a judge ordered the DOL to reconsider the case, citing case law that allows for evidence collected after termination to be used to determine whether an employee had breached their contract.

In its reconsideration, the DOL found the testimony the district relied on for its evidence was not as credible as Blouin’s claim, and again decided in her favor.

The school district filed an appeal of that decision in December, and last week Attorri ruled the DOL decision should stand. His ruling found the DOL had made no legal errors in their retrying of the case, upholding the ruling.

In addition to the amount owed for unused vacation pay, Attorri also determined the district should pay for a portion of Blouin’s legal fees. The amount awarded by the Department of Labor is essentially double the amount withheld by the district, a penalty applied by state statute when an employer is found to have willfully deprived an employer of their due compensation.

“In sum, the Department committed no legal error in determining that Blouin was not in material breach of the employment agreement,” Attorri wrote. “The Department, as the trier of fact, discredited the evidence of Blouin’s alleged breaches and found instead that Blouin’s termination was motivated by Tucker’s animus towards her.”

Blouin was one of seven district employees who participated in an internal investigation into complaints against Tucker’s management of the district. The district ultimately found that those complaints were unfounded.

Responding to an inquiry for comment, Tucker wrote in an email, “We disagree with the decision and will work with counsel and the [School] Board on next steps.”

He added, "The District remains confident that he employment action that it took was completely justified based upon the results of an independent investigation into the conduct of the employee as presented in the record of this case."

Peter Callaghan, an attorney at Preti Flaherty in Concord and who represented Blouin in the case, noted his client has been waiting for the compensation for about two years.

“The department found Christine was credible and believed her testimony, and did not believe the district’s fabricated claims,” Callaghan said. “The DOL also ruled that the district acted willfully in failing to pay her wages. We’re pleased that the court affirmed all of those decisions and that it ordered the district to pay Christine’s attorney fees. We hope the district will stop fighting and will just pay what it owes.”