DOVER-FOXCROFT, Maine — A hearing on a preliminary injunction to prevent the town of Sangerville from paying legal fees in a disputed municipal election case will be heard on Monday, March 9 in Piscataquis County Superior Court.
Irving McNaughton, who lost a race for selectman to Melissa Randall by one vote at the 2014 annual town meeting, is attempting to have the results overturned, citing what he termed were irregularities in the way the voting was conducted.
One of the major sticking points is the requirement by state law that candidates for office in towns with fewer than 4,000 population receive a “majority of the votes cast,” according to the Maine Moderator’s Manual.
At the 2014 election, 70 votes were cast but three names were written on the wrong type of paper. Those were not included in the final count, which showed Randall with 34 votes and McNaughton with 33.
McNaughton said Randall should not have been elected unless she received 36 votes, or the majority out of 70 total cast. The Maine Municipal Association disagreed and said the governing body — selectmen — have no authority to overturn the results of an election or force a revote.
But he also said the town should not pick up Randall’s legal expenses in the dispute, so the injunction was filed in an attempt to stop it.
In the town’s response, attorney Thad Zmistowski said an “application for a preliminary injunction must be accompanied by a sworn statement of specific facts which is sufficient to support findings that the criteria for a preliminary injunction are met. Here, plaintiff (McNaughton) has not even attempted to set forth sworn facts as proof to support his request for a preliminary injunction.”
McNaughton, however, said he has filed adequate documentation supporting his case.
“I don’t know what he refers to as ‘statement of specific facts,’” McNaughton said. “If the court felt the case had no merit, it would have been thrown out by now.”
The response to the request for a preliminary injunction also takes aim at McNaughton’s reason for the request.
“Indeed, the purpose of plaintiff’s motion is to deny defendant legal counsel, which is inconsistent with our judicial system’s time-honored notion that a party faced with a civil complaint is entitled to legal representation, thus making the likelihood of injury to defendant should plaintiff’s motion be granted, outweigh the likelihood of injury should his motion be denied.”
But McNaughton said that during the meeting when the Board of Selectmen voted to pay for Randall’s legal fees, “it was supposedly based on the fear that nobody would run for office if they were afraid to get sued. It’s right on the recording of the minutes. So I tried to tell them that if that’s the case, they should be paying for mine, too. But they wouldn’t listen to me.”
The hearing will start at 1 p.m. in the Piscataquis County courthouse.