By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

                Bronson Town Council members agreed Monday night to meet in private with their co-defendant, Town Attorney Steven Warm early next Monday to plot strategy for defense of a civil suit filed by Councilman Berlon Weeks.

            Mayor Beatrice Roberts, Councilmen Robert Partin, Jason Hunt, and Aaron Edmondson along with Interim Clerk Melisa Thompson and Warm are named as defendants in the Weeks lawsuit.

            Weeks and his attorney Blake Fugate are asking a judge to declare that Weeks never officially resigned from the council but rather was barred from continuing his duties when the town council voted 3-1 on Sept. 23 last year to accept his resignation.

            The lawsuit asks a circuit judge to declare that Florida’s laws require absolute clarity and lack of ambiguity when a public official allegedly resigns from their position and creates a vacancy.

            Weeks is requesting an injunction that would prohibit the council from continuing to stop him from performing his official duties as a council member and would compel the council to let him return to office as a duly elected council member.

            The suit also asks the judge to declare that all actions taken by the town deprived Weeks of an opportunity to participate in discussions that led to him being barred from serving in office.

            The council met for 15 minutes Monday to discuss the lawsuit and other matters in a regular board meeting. Edmondson was absent. He is scheduled for surgery Tuesday.

            One of its first actions was to accept the resignation of Thompson dated Jan. 28, the day after Spotlight published a story announcing Weeks had filed his lawsuit. Thompson made no mention of the lawsuit in her resignation letter. She thanked the council for hiring her and said she was moving forward to advance her career.

            Her resignation came just one business day before the new town manager, Susan Beaudet arrived for her first day at work. Beaudet was introduced with applause at Monday’s council meeting after her first day on the job, but she faces an uphill climb as she takes over the town’s top administrative post in the middle of a major lawsuit and at a time when the interim clerk is leaving the Town.

            The lawsuit places Warm in an awkward position as the town’s legal counsel and as a co-defendant in the lawsuit filed by Weeks. It was Warm who urged the council Monday night by telephone conference line to meet with him “no later than early next week” in a private session to plot strategy for responding to the lawsuit.

            He said the council is allowed under Florida law to meet privately to discuss the lawsuit facing council members and him. He said Monday’s meeting is a strategy session.

            “It can’t be a public meeting because when you’re defending a lawsuit you don’t want to tell the other side everything you’re thinking and doing,” Warm said.

            Private meetings of public boards to discuss legal strategy are known as “shade” meetings. It means the board isn’t required to meet in public as required by the Florida Sunshine Law for most board meetings.

            Councilman Jason Hunt asked Warm if he had determined whether the town’s insurance would pay for the hiring of a second lawyer to defend the council members in the lawsuit. Warm said Thompson had been working hard to get an answer but had found out nothing. Warm said he would find out tomorrow morning if the town’s insurance will pay for an attorney. If not, the council may be forced to pay for the town’s defense of the lawsuit with public tax dollars.

            Warm acknowledged in a Feb. 1 letter to the council that he may have a conflict of interest or possibly a perceived conflict of interest that would prevent him from representing the council in the lawsuit or at the very least representing other co-defendants.

            “For one thing, I am myself, personally a defendant and as such and despite the community of interest I share with the other Defendants, there is a potential for a conflict of interest,” Warm wrote. “The law precludes conflicts, of course, but also the suggestion that conflict may be present. I would never consciously do anything to compromise the interest of the Town but, in theory, at least, a situation could arise where doing or not doing something would serve my interests personally and yet be adverse to the town. For that reason, it may be wiser for someone else to appear either for all parties or some.”

            Warm said he inquired whether the town’s insurance would cover defense of a suit of this nature. If the insurance does cover a lawsuit, the company would be obliged to supply legal counsel. But he isn’t certain at this point.

            “Another factor is that this suit raises federal questions under certain federal statutes and under the United States Constitution and we may want to import expertise in those specialized areas,” Warm wrote. “All considered I’m not sure I should take the liberty of assuming I’ll be the attorney in the case by acknowledging service in that capacity. It is also relevant that any implied authority I have in that regard would run to the Town in any event and not to individual members of the Council or municipal officers, each of whom has a right to determine how they wish to approach this situation.”

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Town of Bronson Regular Meeting February 1, 2021; Posted February 1, 2021