At a Northville Township board meeting, a stranger got up to speak at the public session last week and asked to give something to each trustee as well as the public safety director and township manager.
Seconds later, each township leader was served with a wrongful-termination lawsuit filed by the former fire chief.
It was the second time in 22 years that the township and Northville Township Manager Chip Snider have been sued by a fire chief for wrongful termination. In 1994, the township settled out of court for an undisclosed sum after ex-chief Ricke Roselle was, according to his lawsuit, told by the township’s then public safety director Snider with no warning to resign or be fired immediately.
In the current lawsuit filed by ex-chief Rich Marinucci, the township had no comment, except to say that Marinucci resigned – in other words, he was not terminated -- according to Snider in an e-mail to the Free Press.
Marinucci's lawsuit begs to differ, saying that he was forced out after years of distinguished service.
Marinucci, 62, became Northville Township’s fire chief eight years ago after retiring from Farmington Hills, following 24 years as chief there. Marinucci said he was terminated March 19 from Northville’s $116,000-a-year post, although he’s won numerous state and national awards for his fire-safety competence and leadership. Yet, his job ended abruptly and now he's seeking a financial settlement. Marinucci’s lawsuit asks for more than $25,000 for each of seven counts, including wrongful termination, age discrimination, violation of the Michigan Open Meetings Act and denial of due process, plus attorney fees.
“I don’t know that he could go back to that job now,” said Marinucci’s lawyer, Jill Schinske, who specializes in ethics violations alleged against public officials, CEOs and other lawyers. Marinucci denies that he ever resigned – despite the township saying otherwise, Schinske said.
“They claim he resigned and keep making public statements to that effect, but he never did. He was simply told not to report to work,” she said.
The lawsuit, filed in Wayne County Circuit Court, stems from a determination in March that the township would not receive a clean financial audit “because of related party disclosures.” That includes a number of fire associations for which Marinucci’s wife worked, and with which the township conducted business.
Marinucci said the township had “known since before I was hired” that his wife – Linda Stone-Marinucci – worked as an administrative assistant for the Fire Department Safety Officials Association.
“I talked about that when I was recruited,” he said.
Marinucci has some support throughout the fire fighting community.
“It’s pretty unfortunate the way things got handled in Northville,” said Chief of Brighton Area Fire Authority Michael O’Brian, president of the Michigan Association of Fire Chiefs. “Rich’s staff there is extremely disappointed, if you ask his guys. That community’s got some great fire protection that they didn’t have eight years ago – he really brought them up -- and he did that during a recession,” O’Brian said. The job of fire chief isn’t always a secure one, he added.
As for Roselle, he now co-owns R&R Fire Truck Repair in the city of Northville, a business that repairs fire trucks for the cities of Detroit, Dearborn Heights, Romulus and dozens of others – even Mackinac Island – but gets no business from Northville Township, said Roselle’s wife Nancy Roselle, who is president of the firm.
Contact Bill Laitner: 313-223-4485 or [email protected]. Information from hometownlife.com is included in this report.
———
©2016 the Detroit Free Press
Visit the Detroit Free Press at www.freep.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
