Dallemand arbitration process shifts gears with document exchange in Bibb County clash

The first round of discovery has begun in the multimillion-dollar arbitration battle between former school Superintendent Romain Dallemand and the Bibb County school district.

The discovery period opened Aug. 31, and it could continue through Dec. 30, according to documentation from the American Arbitration Association.

After nearly eight months into the arbitration process, both parties have begun to produce documents to either prove their own claims or try to disprove the opposing party’s claim.

In the first load of documents, obtained by The Telegraph through an Open Records Act request, the school board voluntarily produced almost 4,000 pages.

Those records included audits, invoices, purchase orders, board policies and other documentation going back several years.

Dallemand produced a little more than 100 documents that contained information such as articles from The Telegraph about an audit by the accounting firm Mauldin & Jenkins, as well as the Georgia Professional Standards Commission report that led to the revocation of Dallemand’s educator license last year.

Attorneys for Dallemand also produced a July 16 letter from David Larson, executive director for the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents, that said Dallemand “has no prospect whatsoever of obtaining gainful employment in the field of education” because of news reports and the revocation of his license.

Dallemand’s $10 million claim, filed with the association in January, contends that school board members violated provisions of his severance agreement with the system by reporting the audit findings to the PSC, among other complaints such as disparaging his name.

The school board filed its own $7.5 million counterclaim in February, which was later dismissed, but the panel also ruled that the board could use those claims as an affirmative defense.

Much like a civil trial, discovery is the process by which each party shares and requests information to validate its claims or defenses.

Besides document production, discovery is also a period in which each party can pose questions to those involved under oath.

The attorneys for Dallemand want the school district to identify every person involved in:

Drafting Dallemand’s severance agreement;

Hiring the accounting firm Mauldin & Jenkins;

Releasing the audit “in public and/or not breaking into executive session to discuss portions of the audit” that related to Dallemand;

Filing any complaints to the PSC;

Seeking a state or federal criminal investigation of Dallemand after the audit was published.

Dallemand’s attorney wants each person to “describe in full detail his or her role with respect to those decisions.”

Because of a confidentiality order imposed by the arbitration panel, neither party is able to comment on the case.

The panel released an order Aug. 31, noting a recent inquiry by the state Attorney General’s Office -- prompted by The Telegraph -- about its compliance with the Georgia Open Meetings Act.

The panel wrote in its order that it “will certainly comply with the Open Meetings Act,” provided that circumstances -- a quorum of board members present, for example -- trigger the need for the arbitration hearings to be public.

However, the panel urged the parties to consider that it “knows of no Georgia law that requires a quorum of the board, let alone the entire board, to attend any hearing in this case.”

Doing so, it added, “would require a deviation from long-standing practice not only in arbitration hearings but also in court proceedings for an entity, such as the board, to be represented at a hearing (or trial) by more than a single representative.”

Also in its order, the panel noted that because discovery is just beginning, the first actual hearing isn’t likely to take place until spring 2016 at the earliest.

As of June 30, the arbitration fees paid for by the school district had reached almost $25,000, according to an invoice from the arbitration association.

However, those fees do not include the cost of the arbitrators, which can range from $350 to $450 an hour, or the cost of the school board’s attorney.

To contact writer David Schick, call 744-4382 or find him on Twitter@davidcschick.

This story was originally published September 13, 2015 at 10:30 PM with the headline "Dallemand arbitration process shifts gears with document exchange in Bibb County clash ."