After months of investigation, the city of Sandy fired former interim police chief Sean Lundry. Now, in response, Lundry is threatening a lawsuit against the city, City Manager Tyler Deems, Deputy City Manager Jeff Aprati and Mayor Stan Pulliam.
Lundry was placed on administrative leave in February pending an investigation by OSP and the city of Sandy. As of May 22, Deems notified Lundry via an official letter that because of the results of the city’s investigation, the city intended to terminate his employment.
In response, Lundry sent a rebuttal via letter, which he followed up on July 16 with an official tort claim notice.
In his notice letter, Lundry’s legal representation from Bradley Bernstein and Sands, informed the city administrators that the tort claim was being filed for “your indefensible, serial violations of (Lundry’s) rights and the damages he has — and will continue — to suffer as a result of your conduct.”
“It also notifies you of your obligation to immediately preserve all documents and communications relating in any way to the subject matter of the claims Mr. Lundry intends to bring against you,” the letter said. “The facts will show that, rather than serving the people of Sandy, you have served your own narrow, political interests. Mr. Lundry has unjustly suffered the consequences of your unlawful and unconstitutional conduct. On Mr. Lundry’s behalf, we intend to hold you accountable.”
Suits will be filed against Pulliam, Deems, Aprati and the City of Sandy individually in an effort to recover alleged damages caused by a “pattern of baseless, unlawful and unconstitutional investigations and unfounded discipline.”
The letter further asserted that the city, Pulliam, Deems and Aprati would face claims of “wrongful discharge, malicious prosecution, unlawful and unconstitutional retaliation, and violation of the due process rights to which he was entitled as a public employee.”
The letter then gives a rundown of the events leading up to Lundry’s dismissal, asserting that Deems and Aprati gave no indication of their choice to pass over Lundry in the first hiring round based on allegations from community comment cards, and even thanked him for his service in their announcement about the conditional hiring of Gary Jensen.
“The city immediately received both internal and community backlash to its decision to pass over Mr. Lundry and instead hire Mr. Jensen, including from senior City staff and even from the City Council President, who publicly stated that the city had made the wrong decision in passing over Mr. Lundry,” the letter claims. “As this community backlash grew, city leaders began scrambling to find some way to discredit Mr. Lundry — the superior candidate for the position of Chief, and the one who had garnered the most public support — and to justify their decision to instead hire an out-of-state candidate with a dubious background and no knowledge of the Sandy community.”
Lundry’s representation then goes on to allege, as Lundry argued in his response to Deem’s post-investigation letter, that Lundry never made a threat to “fly to Utah to punch Mr. Jensen,” and that Deems met with him on Feb. 1 to talk about this allegation but made no mention of the impending investigation.
The two investigations that followed, the tort notice letter asserts, were based on an “anonymous comment card falsely alleging that Mr. Lundry had improperly shredded unspecified public records, which the City had received more than a month and a half earlier during the January 3 meet-and-greet reception.”
Lundry’s representation alleges that the criminal investigation conducted by OSP was initiated based on a “single, stale, anonymous, clearly biased comment,” and the city had no real evidence to support investigating Lundry.
The lawsuit claims that what followed was malintent on the part of Deems, Aprati and Pulliam to “air false accusations” and “malign and defame a longtime public servant” through public posts on the city’s website, the mayor’s website and social media. In doing so, Lundry’s representation asserts that Deems included “a bevy of new allegations as to which he had supposedly developed ‘concerns,’” which led Deems to the conclusion that Lundry’s “overall conduct” justified the termination of his employment of nine years.
Overall, with the tort claim, Lundry and his representation argue that the city leaders intentionally caused harm to his reputation by illegal means that did not afford him his rightful opportunities to clear his name.
Subsequently, the letter obliges Deems, Pulliam and Aprati to immediately preserve “all emails, text messages, social media messages, and other communications of any kind sent or received by Mr. Pulliam, Mr. Deems, or Mr. Aprati from July 1, 2023, to present,” which might be relevant to the dispute.
Lundry is giving the city until Aug. 16 to resolve the dispute “to his satisfaction,” otherwise he will file suit and seek damages.
The Post reached out to Deems, Aprati and Pulliam about the lawsuit and Deems responded saying “the city has no comment on this matter.”
The Post will continue to publish updates to this story as new information becomes available.
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