City must pay $310,000 to former employee

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News and analysis by Geoff Kelly, Investigative Post's political reporter

The City of Buffalo’s law department last week asked the Common Council to approve a $310,000 settlement to a lawsuit filed by James Kaufmann, who worked 23 years for the police department’s information technology unit before the city eliminated his position 14 years ago.

The elimination of his job was retaliation, Kaufmann claimed in his lawsuit. And the city violated state civil service law by not hiring him for another, similar post in the years that followed.

According to the lawsuit, city officials said they’d “get even” with Kaufmann for testifying in a 2005 arbitration hearing that led to the city paying lost wages to him and other members of his union, AFSCME Local 650.

Kaufmann’s complaint enumerates the punishments: A police lieutenant searched his desk and office. His access to computer programs he needed to do his job was restricted. His city-owned vehicle was taken away. He was repeatedly brought up on departmental charges and suspended without pay.

After his third unpaid suspension in 2009, the city “assigned him to a different location than his usual one and gave him no assignments … literally had Mr. Kaufmann sit at a desk in a hallway with nothing to do for days.”

The retaliation culminated in 2010 with the city eliminating Kaufmann’s job title, putting him out of work, according to the complaint. In the years that followed, Kaufmann claimed, the city wrongfully passed over his name on civil service lists when hiring positions for which he was qualified, violating state civil service law.

He sued the city in 2014, after those civil service lists expired.

Kaufmann, 60, worked for the Gow School in South Wales for more than a decade after being forced out of the police department. He started collecting a state pension — a little under $24,000 a year — in 2019.

The Council last week sent the proposed settlement to the Claims Committee, which meets Thursday. Lawmakers likely will approve the settlement next week.

City lawyers also asked lawmakers to approve settling a lawsuit arising from the same 2020 incident in which a police officer driving nearly 80 miles per hour struck then 29-year-old Chelsea Ellis, leaving her paraplegic. The Common Council last November approved settling Ellis’s lawsuit for $43 million. The cash-strapped city was compelled to take out a five-year loan to pay the bill.

Now the city’s law department wants the Council to approve paying $325,000 to Karley Mueller, who was walking with Ellis at the time and also was struck. Officer Branden Lowe, the driver of the police SUV, was speeding southbound in the northbound lane on Main Street, when he hit a car turning left onto Benwood Avenue. Lowe’s police SUV jumped the curb, hit a utility pole and crashed into Ellis and Mueller. Lowe was responding to a domestic violence call that turned out to be a false alarm.

The city previously paid $55,000 to James Barclay, a passenger in the car Lowe struck. The driver of that car, Jyirah Bailey, is also suing the city.

In addition to those lawsuits, the law department asked the Council to approve settlements for three other claims — a slip-and-fall,  an accident involving a city garbage truck, and another involving a police car — totaling nearly $30,000.

So far this year the Council has approved $471,750 in lawsuit settlements. The new crop of settlements pushes that total over $1.1 million.

In addition to the $43 million for Chelsea Ellis, the Council last year approved another $3 million to settle claims ranging from car accidents to police misconduct.

Since 2021, excluding the Ellis case, the city has paid about $13 million to settle lawsuits alleging personal injury or property damage, most often with blame directed at the police, fire or public works departments.

Geoff Kelly