The "fast track" trial is set for next year on March 4. The city is accusing FROED of owing $113,000 in back rent.
NEW BEDFORD — The case of the city versus the Fall River Office of Economic Development has a trial date on what the Superior Court judge called an accelerated track.
The "fast track" trial is set for next year on March 4. The city is accusing FROED of owing $113,000 in back rent.
City Corporation Counsel Joseph Macy and FROED attorneys Randall T. Weeks and Paul Kessimian were back in court in a pre-trial conference on Thursday.
The city honored the court order to supply FROED with emails and text messages with Macy telling Superior Court Judge Raffi Yessayan that it handed over 1,950 pages of emails and text messages between City Administrator Cathy Ann Viveiros and Mayor Jasiel Correia II, who evicted the non-profit agency last summer.
“We delivered them to his office and to date we haven’t heard any complaints, which is unusual in this case,” said Macy.
Weeks, however, did have an issue with the discovery he received, saying there were missing text messages, emails with missing attachments and inconsistencies in Viveiros’ testimony in a deposition that counters some of the text messages between herself and the mayor.
Reading from the deposition testimony, Weeks said that Viveiros claimed the only text she ever wrote had to do with making appointments and that she deleted them.
“Do you recall if any of those text had anything to do with FROED and her response to me was, 'there may have been text simply regarding FROED,'” Weeks said.
The few text messages the defense lawyers received from the city between Viveiros and the mayor did in fact involve communications regarding issues other than appointments and showed the inconsistency with the city administrator’s testimony, said Weeks.
Reading a portion of one text that involved a telephone call from a reporter from The Herald News regarding the FROED executive board, Viveiros asks Correia to return the call.
“I don’t want to give FROED any slack on this ongoing battle,” read Weeks.
Viveiros, he said, makes “express misrepresentations under oath.”
“So I have trust issues,” Weeks said.
Macy called the attorney’s innuendo and the cost to supply the emails and text messages was “stuff and nonsense.”
Through a public records request, The Herald News learned the city paid the Providence-based Forensic Risk Alliance $5,400 to extract the emails and text messages associated with the case.
Yessayan denied, for now, FROED’s lawyers request for additional email and text data as part of their discovery request but did grant Macy’s similar request for emails and text messages regarding the case from FROED, although he decreased the scope of the required communications.
Weeks said he would need 90 days to produce the discovery the city requested and said he still needs to depose Correia, the Fall River police officer who took possession of Viveiros and the mayor’s cellphones to mine the text messages and former city auditor Krishan Gupta to show that the city never budgeted the rent receipts the city said is owed.
Yessayan set June 27 as the date the two sides would complete their discovery.
Email Jo C. Goode at jgoode@heraldnews.com