$999,999 Lawsuit from Former Fire Chief Against Baker City, OR, Dismissed

Former Baker City Fire Chief Todd Jaynes' civil suit against the city for nearly a $1 million has been dismissed.

By Jayson Jaco

Source Baker City Herald, OR (TNS)

Sept. 18, 2025

4 min read

A civil suit agaisnt Baker City, OR, for nearly $1 million from former fire chief has been dismissed by a judge.

A judge has dismissed former Baker City, OR, Fire Chief Todd Jaynes’ $999,999 civil suit against the city.

Senior Judge Thomas Bradford of Newport, who presided in place of Judge Matt Shirtcliff, issued a ruling Tuesday, Sept. 16, on the city’s motion for summary judgment.

Branford heard oral arguments on that motion during a 45-minute hearing July 25 in Baker County Circuit Court.

That hearing happened two years to the day that Jaynes signed a five-year employment contract with the city.

Jon France, then the city’s interim manager, negotiated the contract with Jaynes.

About seven and a half months later, on March 8, 2024, City Manager Barry Murphy fired Jaynes.

Although Murphy didn’t say publicly why he fired Jaynes, in a memo dated March 6 that was included as an exhibit with the city’s June 20 motion to dismiss the lawsuit, Murphy, who started as city manager in January 2024, wrote that he was not satisfied with Jaynes’ answers to several questions Murphy had about the fire department budget and other matters, and that Jaynes lacked certain firefighter certifications.

Jaynes filed the lawsuit on July 6, 2024. He was seeking $899,999 in economic damages and $100,000 in noneconomic damages.

Legal arguments

During the July 25 hearing, the city’s attorney, Luke Reese, told the judge that an evidence rule, known as the parol evidence rule, prevents Jaynes from arguing that France, in negotiating the contract in 2023, misrepresented terms of the contract that Jaynes signed.

The city’s initial attorney in the case, Kirk Mylander, wrote in his motion for summary judgment that the parol evidence rule “prohibits introduction of prior oral statements that contract an unambiguous written agreement.”

The written agreement is the contract Jaynes signed. Reese said during the hearing that the city’s “position is that the language is clear” in the contract — that it not ambiguous.

Therefore, Reese argued, Jaynes’ contention that statements France made during the negotiations can’t be used as evidence in the lawsuit.

Slezak disagreed.

He argued that the contract was void because France told Jaynes that although the contract included a “convenience clause” that allowed the city to fire Jaynes without cause, so long as it paid him a severance equal to three months of his salary (the city paid Jaynes $21,129), France also said Jaynes could have the job for five years or even longer if he wished to stay.

That was a “material misrepresentation,” Slezak said, and one that induced Jaynes to sign the contract despite his misgivings about the convenience clause.

Slezak told the judge that Jaynes had told France, before signing the contract, that he needed assurance that he could have the job for at least five years, as that would allow him to be fully vested in Oregon’s Public Employees Retirement System.

Slezak called that the “key element of this agreement.”

Slezak also argued that France implied to Jaynes that the convenience clause was included because the Baker City Council required that, even though France needed no approval from councilors to draft the contract.

(France did, however, need council approval to hire Jaynes, since the city charter doesn’t allow interim city managers to hire employees.)

Slezak also contended that the contract Jaynes signed, and under which Murphy fired Jaynes, was void because the five-year term in the contract is “inconsistent with” the convenience clause that allows the city to fire Jaynes without cause.

Reese responded by telling the judge that there is no evidence in the record that France or anyone else from the city told Jaynes that the convenience clause couldn’t be enforced.

The clause was in the contract that Jaynes signed, and Reese argued that nothing France told Jaynes during negotiations constituted a “knowingly false statement.”

Judge Branford, in his written opinion dismissing the lawsuit, wrote that he “concurs with, and hereby adopts,” the city’s “recitation and analysis of the facts, and the law set forth in the motion for summary judgment.”

Branford cited case law, noting that to overcome a motion for summary judgment, as Jaynes’ lawyer sought to do, he would need to offer “expert testimony” that creates a question of fact for a jury to consider.

Branford wrote that in Jaynes’ lawsuit, “expert opinion testimony appears to be superfluous in this case, and plaintiff’s resort to this strategy to combat a motion for summary judgment is not viable.”