- April 24, 2024
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For the second time, Flagler County is seeking attorneys’ fees against right-wing activists who filed what county officials called “knowingly false” and “malicious” complaints against its officials.
This time, the targets were County Commissioner Nate McLaughlin and County Attorney Al Hadeed, who were the subject of Ethics Commission complaints filed by Dennis McDonald and John Ruffalo, members of the Ronald Reagan Republican Assembly of Flagler County. The Ethics Commission threw out both cases — which alleged, among other things, that McLaughlin had misused his public position by permitting a previous claim against him to be handled through the county’s insurance provider, and that Hadeed, as county attorney, shouldn’t have permitted it — on Oct. 28.
The Board of County Commissioners gave its unanimous consent to seek attorneys’ fees in both cases after Hadeed, speaking in the comment period at the end of the Nov. 2 commission meeting, said the filings were made to libel their targets and “create a false impression of the board members.”
“I think they falsely, and maliciously, have put these things forward for future opportunities for embarrassment and to cause detriment to our lives, to our families.”
— Nate McLaughlin, Flagler County commissioner
“These allegations were knowingly falsely made,” Hadeed said of the complaint filed against McLaughlin by McDonald.
McLaughlin said he wanted to add another descriptors to Hadeed’s characterization of the complaints: “malicious.”
“I think they falsely, and maliciously, have put these things forward for future opportunities for embarrassment and to cause detriment to our lives, to our families,” McLaughlin said.
Many of the allegations contained in the nearly 190-page complaint John Ruffalo had filed against Hadeed, Hadeed said, targeted County Commission members, even though Hadeed had been named as the respondent. “While I’m the respondent of the complaint … the complaint might as well have been against, me you, you you and you — all of you,” he said to the commission members. “The purpose in the assertion of these complaints is to put the board in a false light, myself in a false light, to libel and essentially smear our reputations.”
Before the two men had filed the complaints, he said, “There were a number of things that were spread out on the public record that would have demonstrated to any reasonable person — and were certainly accessible to any reasonable person — that the allegations that they made were false.”
Hadeed noted that repeated filings against himself and the county commissioners by Ronald Regan Republican members and by former elections supervisor Kimberle Weeks had repeatedly been sent to their home addresses right before major holidays. The complaints against McLaughlin and Hadeed were sent shortly before July 4.
The purpose in the assertion of these complaints is to put the board in a false light, myself in a false light, to libel and essentially smear our reputations.
— Al Hadeed, Flagler County attorney
“I believe that the purpose of that was to further upset your families with respect to these assertions, and that they had the view that by sending these to your home address as opposed to the Government Services Building, that somehow it would deprive you of protections that you’re entitled to by law, by edict of the Florida Supreme Court and the Florida Legislature, forcing you to defend these false allegations by hiring your own attorney,” Hadeed said.
The county had also sought attorneys' fees in an earlier case filed by the “Flagler-Palm Coast Watchdogs,” a shadowy group that listed one man, Dan Bozza, as its member. Bozza refused to discuss the group's membership with the press, but McDonald and Ruffalo had also attended meetings about that case with Bozza, Hadeed said. Circuit Judge Michael Orfinger found that suit frivolous and in a March hearing granted the county’s request for fees.
Hadeed noted that the Watchdogs case was the only other one, in his many years with the county, in which he’d advised the county to seek fees against someone who’d brought a complaint or a suit against county government — a step Hadeed called “extraordinary.”
“We don’t seek to penalize citizens for their disagreement. We don’t do that,” he said. “That’s our American way; they’re allowed to vent, so to speak.”
But in their Ethics Commission complaints, he said, Ruffalo and McDonald went “way beyond the pale in pursuing their grievances.”
The complaints also threatened to raise the county’s insurance premiums, which are paid for by ad valorem taxes.
By seeking fees, Hadeed said, “We’re recovering for what we had to spend to defend these. These are monies that are … real costs to the county.” And, he said. “The hours I spend on these, I can’t spend on other stuff. … So we have losses there for work that gets delayed, unnecessarily, for the benefit of the public.”
