Owes AFSCME $5-10G
Ex-Tech Guild Head Is Socked for Suit

By MEREDITH KOLODNER

A judge has ruled that former District Council 37 Local 375 President Roy Commer, who sued his international union for damages after it ousted him from the union, must reimburse the union thousands of dollars in legal fees.

ROY COMMER: Paying price once more.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees will not receive the full $25,484.71 it requested. But Federal District Court Judge Robert W. Sweet did rule that Mr. Commer, who lost his civil suit last fall, was liable for a portion of AFSCME's costs.

$500-a-Night Hotel

Mr. Commer's lawyer, Arthur Schwartz, successfully argued that some of AFSCME's requests were excessive, such as costs for transcripts and rates of pay cited. For example, Judge Sweet ruled that AFSCME's costs for housing its witnesses, who were put up in the Millennium Hilton at a cost of $500 per night during the trial, exceeded a reasonable limit of $200.

But the judge did not agree with Mr. Schwartz's claim that asking Mr. Commer, who currently makes about $60,000 per year as a city engineer, to pay the legal fees would be a hardship.

GERALD W. McENTEE: Housed witnesses in style.

The judge cited Mr. Commer's joint household income of $130,000 and was not moved by his "untimely filing" that he paid $60,000 in taxes and mortgage payments in 2005 and had $80,000 worth of credit card debt. Judge Sweet wrote that he had "failed to make a sufficient showing of financial hardship for the Court to exercise its discretion and eliminate any award of costs."

The judge also rejected Mr. Schwartz's claim that forcing Mr. Commer to pay AFSCME's legal fees violated of the Landrum-Griffin Act.

A section of this Federal law prevents unions from taking action to discourage members from participating in any judicial or administrative proceedings.

In previous cases in which unions fined members who sued them, judges have ruled in favor of the individual members. Mr. Schwartz hoped to convince the judge that the union was looking to the court to punish Mr. Commer in a way that it could not, but Judge Sweet did not buy the argument. The dissident's lawyer said there was no precedent for AFSCME's claim to legal fees, and that he may bring the issue up on appeal. He estimated that Mr. Commer is liable for between $5,000 and $10,000 in court costs under the ruling.

Mr. Commer was part of a group of reformers in the 1990s that helped to expose vote-rigging and stealing of members' dues money by leaders at DC 37. He won a hotly contested election in February 1998 to head Civil Service Technical Guild Local 375, but was ousted by his executive board that November after some of the board members hostile to him aligned with former Commer allies who were frustrated by his governing style.

Done in by Mailings

AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee reinstated him in the wake of DC 37's scandals becoming public, but the national union later sided with Mr. Commer's opponents who accused him of sending out two mailings to rank-and-file members without the executive board's permission and failing to reimburse the local for the $12,000 in mailing costs. Mr. Commer claimed that he attempted to pay part of the costs, but was thwarted by opponents looking for a way to get rid of him. The mailings, which concerned union elections, did not materially benefit Mr. Commer.

An AFSCME panel ousted him as president in 2000 and stripped him of his union membership the following year. In November 2006, Mr. Commer lost a civil suit against AFSCME in which he alleged that the international union violated his right to free speech. He had accused the union's leadership of targeting him after he sharply criticized Mr. McEntee for not responding more quickly to allegations of corruption inside DC 37.