Former De Soto interim Police Chief Michael McMunn is suing the city of
De Soto, the City Council and three other city officials in a breach-of-contract dispute.
The suit was filed March 23 in the Jefferson County Circuit Court. The defendants listed in the suit are Mayor Larry Sanders; city clerk and interim City Manager Ann Baker; city attorney Mark Bishop; and City Council members Roger Charleville, Clayton Henry, Rick Lane and Rick McClane.
McMunn, 40, who joined the De Soto Police Department in 2008, was named interim chief last Nov. 3 following the resignation of then-chief Rick Draper, who has returned to the department as a detective. The city fired McMunn on Feb. 7 without disclosing a reason for the dismissal.
As McMunn’s attorney, Allison Sweeney, noted, however, that the city rehired McMunn to his former rank as a sergeant about two weeks after his dismissal, in the midst of negotiating a settlement to complete his reinstatement.
“Under the terms of (McMunn’s) contract, only the council can terminate him,” Sweeney said. “That termination decision seemed to be made solely by the city manager and the city attorney, without speaking to the council because there’s no record that the council took any sort of action prior to his termination.”
The city rehired McMunn at his previous sergeant’s pay rate, which was $42,286 a year. However, the city has refused to take the termination off his record, said Sweeney of the Sweeney Law Firm in Hillsboro.
“We wanted the termination scrubbed off his record because it wasn’t done correctly under the contract,” she said. “The city refused to do that but decided they would take him back as an officer. So he comes back, and immediately people at City Hall start pressuring him to sign (a) litigation waiver. But this termination is on his record. As a cop, that’s a big deal because you can’t get a job somewhere else when you’ve been fired.
“And now we think they’re trying to terminate him again. So we had to file this lawsuit to protect his job and try to get this termination off his record.
“The whole thing could have been resolved, without wasting any taxpayer money, had the city been willing to take that termination off his record. But they wouldn’t do that.”
James Kreitler of the Wegmann Law Firm in Hillsboro, representing the city and the officials named in the suit, filed two motions to dismiss the case on April 3. In addition, Kreitler filed a motion to enforce a settlement the city and McMunn were negotiating before the lawsuit was filed.
Bishop and Kreitler are colleagues at Wegmann Law, and Kreitler was unequivocal in his view that McMunn’s suit has no merit.
“The lawsuit (that) has been filed against the city and the councilpersons in their individual capacities is frivolous, as well as count two directed at my partner and city attorney, Mark Bishop,” Kreitler said. “There’s absolutely no grounds, especially for the suit against him.”
Kreitler said the suit was not only ungrounded but also unnecessary.
“The suit itself is essentially a motion to enforce the (termination) settlement that should have just been handled privately,” he said. “But the plaintiff wants to be litigious and file a suit that is by and large frivolous against the councilpersons and my partner, of course.
“It should have been handled privately, like any other matters, but they decided to (take) this into the courtroom. I think the count against my partner is by and large politically motivated – has to be politically motivated and frivolous. It has no grounds in any law in the state of Missouri.”
Bishop, who lives in Festus, is one of two candidates for the Republican nomination for Jefferson County prosecuting attorney.
He and Trisha Stefanski of Arnold will square off in the Aug. 7 primary election, with the winner facing Democrat Tom Hollingsworth of De Soto in the Nov. 6 general election.