Defense lawyer Mark B. Hanson said the complaint filed by the commonwealth on July 9 relating to Ada’s prior employment with CDA is deficient in substance and form, the allegations insufficient under the pleading requirements and should be dismissed.
Alternatively, Hanson said his client requests the court to require the commonwealth to file an amended complaint and give a more definite statement of its claims.
Ada was hired by CDA to be its executive director in 1998. In 2001, then board chairman Juan S. Tenorio issued memoranda authorizing and directing Ada and the comptroller of CDA to transfer accumulated sick leaves and annual leave benefits of CDA employees.
This policy went on until 2005 when the public auditor questioned it.
In response to the questions of the Public Auditor, CDA’s legal counsel prepared letters for Ada to send as executive director.
Hanson said it was the opinion of the CDA’s legal counsel that CDA has not committed any violation to the law regarding its treatment of CDA employees’ accumulated leave benefits.
Hanson said Ada was “merely following directions from Tenorio and his successors.
“The present allegations by the attorney general on behalf of the commonwealth are nothing more than an attempt to embarrass and humiliate Ada for no other reason than Ada is one of many CDA employees that received benefits from CDA,” Hanson said.
Hanson said the Attorney General’s Office is “inappropriately meddling in the affairs of CDA” and that the case it filed should be dismissed.
According to Hanson, the commonwealth lacks standing to bring the claims against Ada in this lawsuit and failed to show in its pleadings that it would be entitled to damages for misrepresentations by Ada.
He added that there is no recognized civil action for violation of the excepted service personnel regulation, and that the commonwealth cannot make out a claim for unjust enrichment on the facts of the case.
Hanson said the fraud claim has no merit and was merely meant to defame and embarrass Ada.
The commonwealth, he said, has failed to even plead facts that would support the elements of fraud.
Several allegations in the complaint against Ada are immaterial, Hanson said, and that should the case or part of it survives, “the commonwealth should strike out various scandalous, irrelevant, impertinent, and immaterial allegations of the commonwealth’s complaint.”
Ada, now a member of the Board of Education, was accused of violating regulations during her tenure as CDA executive director by converting her sick leaves into vacation leaves and later exchanging that unused time for cash, which gained her over $59,000.
