By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

                A civil lawsuit filed in circuit court against members of the Bronson Town Council and some of their staff in January alleging former Bronson Councilman Berlon Weeks was illegally removed from office hit another roadblock Monday.

            Circuit Judge Craig DeThomasis ruled that Weeks’ attorney, Blake Fugate, would have to add more information to the lawsuit about the defendants and their role in the removal of Weeks before the lawsuit could move forward.

            Fugate wants to depose the council members involved in the removal of Weeks in September of 2020, as well as staff members, but before he can do that, he will have to add more information and refile the lawsuit.

            He said the stalling tactics of the defense team won’t stop the lawsuit. The first stalling tactic was to move the lawsuit to federal court. Fugate managed to move it back to state court. Now he must comply with DeThomasis’ ruling to add more information to the complaint.

            “Another delay tactic is to ask the judge to put more detailed information in our complaint,” Fugate said. “That’s what we’re doing now. We’ll probably have to separate all of the defendants and we’re probably going to have to straighten out some of the defendants that are no longer there and get it back in front of the judge so we can start discovery again.”

            Discovery is a process of attorneys exchanging information about witnesses and evidence that they plan to present at trial. Discovery enables the parties to know before the trial what evidence may be presented.

            “It’s standard operating procedure for a civil defense attorney to make a person who is trying to get something done in court to wait as long as possible,” Fugate said. “But I informed the defense attorney and the judge we’re being stalled but we’re not going to stop. We’re not going to stop with these Sunshine issues.”

            The lawsuit alleges among other things that Bronson Town Council members engaged in behind-the-scenes discussions about what should be done about Weeks using emails and texts and that former Interim Clerk Melisa Thompson participated by passing information between council members.

            The challenge for Fugate is to restructure the complaint in view of the changes in the town council and its staff. Mayor Beatrice Roberts chose not to run for re-election. Her final day is Sept. 30. Interim Clerk Melisa Thompson resigned to take a job with Williston government and now has moved a second time to take a position with Beauchamp and Edwards. Fugate said her new job doesn’t excuse her from answering for her actions that led to Weeks illegal removal from office.

            Fugate alleges that Thompson was one of the people in Bronson Town Hall who passed information between council members by way of emails and texts that led to a decision to remove Weeks from office. The defense claims she is not an elected official and can’t violate the Sunshine Law, but the Sunshine Law is clear that people who participate in passing information between elected officials in private, and behind the scenes, leading to decisions by the elected board share some of the blame for violating the state’s open meetings law. The Sunshine Law requires all elected boards and advisory committees to discuss the public’s business in advertised open meetings.

            Fugate wants to depose all four council members who were involved in the removal of Weeks from office. Roberts, Councilman Robert Partin, and Councilman Aaron Edmondson voted to accept Weeks’s resignation that Weeks says he never made; Councilman Jason Hunt voted against accepting the resignation. Fugate wants to depose the defendants in the case under oath.

            “We want to get to our depositions before we lay out our plan on the whole thing,” Fugate said. “They are trying to throw as much out there right now and we don’t want to do that. We’re trying to figure out how to walk that ridge and make sure we get to where we want to be able to ask them questions and get honest answers from them in these depositions. I don’t want to say dishonest answers, but to prepare the answers they want to give us.”

            The lawsuit was filed against Council members Roberts, Edmondson, Partin and Hunt, Town Attorney Steven Warm, and former Interim Clerk Thompson. On the night the council voted to remove Weeks, Warm was seated at home and trying to listen to the council meeting via a feeble phone speaker system. Most of the time it was clear he couldn’t hear what was taking place and didn’t know the council had voted to remove Weeks or that Weeks had walked out of the meeting in disgust about his mistreatment. Warm is an older gentleman and arranged to stay away from council meetings for more than a year to avoid contracting COVID-19. He arranged to advise the council via a speakerphone. He has returned to that procedure with the same inherent problems. He can’t seem to follow the council discussions at a distance and has to ask the council to explain what is happening and what was said, as he did Monday night.

            Fugate said Roberts decided not to seek another term because she wanted to escape the impacts of the lawsuit, but it won’t work.

            “Beatrice is gone because she doesn’t think she’s going to have to cough up records because she’s leaving or not going to allow us to get into texts regarding the Town of Bronson, but she’s mistaken,” Fugate said.

            Fugate hopes to file the amended complaint in time to address the changing members on the council and on staff. Roberts will leave office on Sept. 30. Thompson is already out of Williston city government or will leave soon. She stopped by the Dogan Cobb Municipal Building Tuesday night to hear the election results. Roberts was also present to hear the results, as well as Hunt and Partin.

            The lawsuit was principally aimed at prohibiting the council from continuing to block Weeks from taking back his seat on the town council. Fugate said the decision to remove him wasn’t within the powers or authority of the council and the decision was really made in private emails and texts between council members that occurred before the meeting, violating the Sunshine Law.

            He said the town needs to fess up to what it did behind the scenes to run a duly elected council member out of his seat. When Weeks attempted to retake his seat at one council meeting, Roberts adjourned the meeting to a close and walked out with the remaining council members. At the council meeting two weeks later, she asked for a sheriff’s deputy to be present at the back of the council chambers to block Weeks from returning to power or remove him if he insisted on taking back his seat on the board.

            Weeks chose to avoid the conflict and didn’t show for the meeting.

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Enterprise Reporting by Terry Witt; Posted September 15, 2021