A Republican candidate who challenged Sen. Patrick Leahy in 2010 suffered another defeat this week when a judge ruled in favor of his former campaign manager.
According to the Vermont Superior Court decision, Len Britton’s 2010 Senate campaign was so low on funds in September of 2010 that Jeffrey Bartley decided he had to stop working or he wouldn’t be paid.
As it turned out, he wasn’t paid even for some of the work he’d already done, according to the lawsuit. The campaign hired Bartley’s consulting firm for $60,000 to help organize Britton’s run, but the court’s findings indicate very little went according to plan.
By September of 2010, just two months before the election, “Bartley was familiar with the finances of the campaign organization and he reasonably believed that [his consulting firm] would not be paid for its services if it continued performing work,” wrote Judge Robert Gerety, Jr. in this week’s decision.
Gerety tried the suit in June, dragging some of the campaign’s inner workings into the public eye.
This week’s decision requires the Britton Campaign to pay Bartley’s firm $31,825.95 in addition to costs incurred during the lawsuit. According to federal campaign finance filings from September, Britton’s campaign has only $863.
Joshua Simonds, the lawyer for Bartley’s firm, says the total amount the campaign has to pay could be more than $50,000 after interest on the outstanding payments and his legal fees.
To get to that money, Simonds said, Bartley’s firm may have to prove that there was malfeasance within the campaign (which is registered as a limited liability corporation with the state), which would allow it to collect the money from the corporation’s officers, including Britton himself.
“There are a set of several criteria of types of evidence that a court will look at and say, ‘Okay, we’ll set aside the limited liability protection of the statute and allow you to get at the individuals themselves,’” Simonds said. “Given the financial reality of the campaign having no money in its coffers, that would be the only way to make a recovery.”
