FRANKLIN, N.H. — The city of Franklin has sued a former police officer for almost $10,000 to recoup some of the cost of his training.
Bryan Croft, who signed a contract in which he agreed to work for the city for three years but left after two, has responded with a lawsuit of his own. In it he claims he was denied overtime pay and was under duress when he signed the contract with the city.
In the federal lawsuit, Croft says the city owes him more than $5,000 in back pay from his time in the police department, from January 2009 to December 2010. Croft, who is currently a Concord police officer, also seeks damages, attorney's fees and other costs.
Croft claims in the suit that the city violated the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 by failing to pay him overtime and maintaining inaccurate records of the hours he worked.
"(Franklin) has willfully refused to pay Officer Croft wages to which he is legally entitled," the suit states.
Paul Fitzgerald, Franklin's Laconia-based attorney, said Croft's claim is an attempt to get the city to drop a suit it filed in April against Croft for breaking a contract he signed two years ago.
"It's a tactic to try and get the city to back off," Fitzgerald said.
Croft was sworn in as a Franklin police officer in January 2009 and was sent to the state police academy the following June for 14 weeks of training. He should have received overtime for his entire time there, said Hugh Lee, Croft's attorney.
"Officer Croft was getting paid for 40 hours a week by the city of Franklin but was actually engaged in many more man-hours per week," Lee said.
Croft also claims he was not paid for overtime for work done outside of the academy and that he was not compensated for the use of his personal car for department work and his travel to and from training.
At the police academy, Croft signed a contract, separate from the police department's collective bargaining agreement, in which he agreed he would stay with the Franklin police for three years from the time he finished the training.
If he were to leave before his three-year commitment had ended, Croft agreed he would pay back the $18,657 the city paid for his training. The agreement prorated the amount by $518 for every month the officer worked. By that calculation, the city demands $9,847 from Croft, according to the suit.
Croft resigned from the Franklin police in December 2010, about a year and a half after he signed the contract, to join the Concord Police Department.
"Officer Croft had been living in Concord, is living in Concord and enjoys very much working for Concord," Lee said.
But Fitzgerald said Croft failed to honor the commitment he made to Franklin.
"The city's protecting the taxpayers' interest here," Fitzgerald said.
"If you take this all by itself, some folks might say that the amount is not overwhelming. But if this were to happen on a regular basis, if we pay for the academy and the officers leave shortly thereafter, that's a significant detriment to the operation of the department, to the city budget," Fitzgerald said.
The department has required officers it sends to the academy to sign the same agreement for years, and when challenged about it, the city prevailed, Fitzgerald said.
But the contract is invalid, Lee said, in part because the city entered into it in bad faith and Croft was forced to sign it when he was at the academy and under duress.
"It is essentially paramilitary training from early Monday morning until Friday afternoon," Lee said. "They're basically a captive group of young men and women going through this training."
Moreover, Croft "was concerned what action the city of Franklin might take if he refused to sign the contract," Lee said, which undermines the legitimacy of the contract.
Fitzgerald defended both the contract and its timing, saying under New Hampshire law an employer can present an employee with a contract at any time.
"The employee has the right to sign it or find employment elsewhere," he said. "From his (Croft's) point of view, it might be duress but I don't think it reaches duress in the legal sense of the word."
The city has until Sept. 6 to file a response, and the entire proceeding, which is likely to include mediation, discovery and court appearances, could take as long as nine months. The two separate cases could also be consolidated into one, Fitzgerald said.
Croft was one of four officers who were hired in 2009, a move that brought the department up to full staffing levels for patrol officers for the first time in a decade, then-Chief Rod Forey said at the time.
A former Plymouth State hockey player who previously worked in business, Croft told the Monitor in 2009 that he applied to the Franklin Police Department after he unsuccessfully applied for a job with the Concord police.
His father, David Croft, is the former chief of the Boscawen Police Department.
Croft left the Franklin Police Department on good terms, Lee said, enjoyed working there and "regrets very much" that he needed to file a federal wage claim against his former employer.
"The city of Franklin is the party that cast the first stone in this matter," Lee said.