Former teacher faces deadline to file for arbitration

Middlesex Superior Court has set an October hearing to hear pleas from news organizations, including YourArlington, to receive further e-mails in the case of a former middle-school principal and teacher. In a related matter, the former teacher, Chuck Coughlin, has until next week to file for arbitration to try to get his job back.

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Arthur Deguglielmo, assistant clerk, sent a notice dated Aug. 24 to Stoneman Chandler & Miller, the law firm that represents the Arlington public schools, reporting that the hearing is set for 2 p.m. Oct. 2 at the Cambridge court. At the hearing, Judge Bruce R. Henry is expected to hear arguments why further e-mails between former Principal Stavroula Bouris and Coughlin should be made public.

All available e-mails related to the investigation were requested in July under rules provided by the state's Open Records Act by The Boston Globe, WBZ (Channel 4), Fox News (Channel 25), The Arlington Advocate and YourArlington.com. This Web site made its request July 16. The aim of the request is to provide as full a report as possible about e-mails between Coughlin and Bouris.

Following an Aug. 13 hearing on a suit to block the e-mails filed by attorney Frank Mondano of Boston, Henry ruled two days later that "... [T]here is a reasonable prospect that the plaintiffs will succeed on the merits of their claims in Count III of their complaint ...."
 
The judge's ruling cites two cases -- Globe Newspaper Co. v. Police Commissioner of Boston, in 1995, and Attorney General v. Collector of Lynn, in 1979. A decision in the former says, in part, "Otherwise private information does not necessarily lose that character by having been at one time placed in the public domain."

The ruling in the latter case says, in part, that in considering a party's privacy interests, courts may consider whether disclosure would "result in personal embarrassment ot an individual or normal sensibilities," or whether the material contains "intimate details" of a "highly personal nature."
 
The Oct. 2 hearing will focus on a case titled “Charles E. Coughlin Jr. and Stavroula Bouris v. John and/or Jane Doe (1), John and/or Jane Doe (2), and the Arlington Public Schools” (Middlesex Superior Court No. 07-3100).

The Advocate reported Aug. 30 that Coughlin had filed a "demand for a jury trial against a John And Jane Doe for 'intentional interference with contractual relations,' and 'interference with advantageous relations.'"

The source for the report is Mondano.

The newspaper reported: "The court has yet to act on those counts.

"'It’s highly probable the complaint will be amended to include a specifically named defendant and additional defendants and clauses of defendants,'" the newspaper quoted Mondano. "'It’s very early in the going. Factual scenarios are still murky at best because the investigation has not really produced clarity, so it’s going to fall upon us to pursue on our own (investigation).'"

Efforts to reach Mondano or the plaintiffs have been unsuccessful. 

Miller said Sept. 4 that knows that Coughlin faces a deadline to file for arbitration on Sept. 10 or 11. Under that process, involving the state Department of Education and the American Arbitration Association, the former teacher would seek a hearing to see whether his dismissal was justified.

{mosimage}This story was first published on this Web site on Aug. 31, 2007.