Arizona Senator Scott Bundgaard files lawsuit against Phoenix
SourceBundgaard files lawsuit against Phoenix
By Dustin Gardiner The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Dec 19, 2012 10:07 PM
Former state Sen. Scott Bundgaard has filed a lawsuit against the city of Phoenix, alleging that city employees conspired to falsely portray him as an abuser rather than a victim in a freeway fight with his ex-girlfriend nearly two years ago.
In a complaint filed against the city in Maricopa County Superior Court on Tuesday, Bundgaard claims that during the course of a police investigation and Senate ethics inquiry, city personnel withheld evidence, defamed him, invaded his medical privacy, caused him to lose employment and inflicted severe emotional distress.
Bundgaard is seeking an unspecified amount in damages. He had earlier filed a notice of claim, a precursor to the lawsuit, against the city seeking $10 million.
The case centers on Bundgaard’s arrest and a police investigation stemming from a February 2011 fight between him and then-girlfriend Aubry Ballard in the median of the Piestewa Freeway. During the quarrel, witnesses said, he hit Ballard, yanked her from the car into the HOV lane and shook her.
Bundgaard’s complaint paints a much different picture of the incident, saying he had been assaulted by an intoxicated and “out of control” Ballard. He alleges that while he was driving, Ballard took his firearm out of the console and waived it around, forcing him to take it from her.
Ballard told investigators that Bundgaard hit her in the chest after he became enraged during an argument. She said she never touched his gun.
The lawsuit names former Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, former Police Chief Jack Harris and several police officers, as well as publicist David Leibowitz, who worked on a contract basis for Gordon. Ballard, who is not a city employee, also was named.
Phoenix spokeswoman Toni Maccarone declined to comment on the complaint Wednesday afternoon. She said the city had not yet received the document.
Much of the 48-page complaint is focused on a Senate Ethics Committee hearing, where Bundgaard says the city’s police officers presented false and defamatory information that ultimately forced him to resign from the Legislature on Jan. 6 because his colleagues were moving to have him expelled.
The complaint states that the actions of city employees involved were “so extreme that they shock the conscious of an orderly society that places trust in its criminal justice processes and personnel.”
Bundgaard’s complaint, prepared by attorney Suzanne Dallimore, says police officers had falsely testified that Bundgaard refused to take a blood-alcohol test the night of the incident.
Police had testified that he smelled of alcohol and refused sobriety tests.
Police have said they did not arrest Bundgaard that night because he invoked legislative immunity, a provision in the state Constitution that protects lawmakers from being arrested in many cases while the Legislature is in session. Bundgaard has repeatedly said he did not claim immunity.
City prosecutors eventually charged Bundgaard with misdemeanor assault and reckless endangerment, and he later pleaded no contest to misdemeanor endangerment.
The complaint states that Gordon, who was mayor at the time of the incident, sought to discredit Bundgaard and instructed Leibowitz to represent Ballard at taxpayers’ expense.
Bundgaard alleges that Gordon bore him ill will because Bundgaard was advocating a bill that would have changed government-procurement requirements.
Leibowitz said his representation of Ballard had nothing to do with his work for the city or any other clients. He said Ballard is a close childhood friend of his wife.
“Aubry is a family friend of mine, and I stepped up to help her,” Leibowitz said, calling the complaint a “ridiculous conspiracy” story. “I wasn’t going to stand by and watch an innocent person be slandered,” he said.
Scott Bundgaard: I was framed!
Source
Posted on December 20, 2012 11:41 am by Laurie Roberts
Scott Bundgaard: I was framed!
The Bundgaard Chronicles, Chapter 3,425: In which the long suffering ex-senator sues the city, claiming he was framed by, well, everybody.
Brutalized by his (now-ex) girlfriend, falsely nailed as an abuser rather than the victim he is, Scott Bundgaard smells a conspiracy afoot. And so he filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the city of Phoenix, claiming he was defamed and distressed by the city’s nefarious police force, which has conspired to make him look like something other than the choir boy that he is.
As a result of their fiendish plot, the good senator was forced to resign from the Legislature and compelled to plead no contest to misdemeanor reckless endangerment, requiring him to undergo domestic violence counseling.
Apparently, the city undertook this dastardly scheme at the direction of then-Mayor Phil Gordon and with the help of Gordon’s PR handmaiden, David Leibowitz. This because Bundgaard was advocating a bill that would have allowed more public scrutiny of government procurement practices – something the mayor didn’t want due to his girlfriend’s connection with the company that holds the city’s bus contract.
Really, that’s the motive.
You will recall that this epic tale began just before midnight on a Friday in February 2011. The then-Senate majority leader was still basking in the glow of his Dancing with the Stars charity rumba when hostilities broke out as he and his girlfriend headed north on Arizona 51.
There’s no way to know what happened inside Bundgaard’s Mercedes that night. He says she started it. She says he started it. They both had minor injuries. At some point, Bundgaard pulled into the median and the fight spilled onto the freeway.
In his lawsuit, Bundgaard says he was initially treated as the victim, as befitting his role as a white knight trying to keep his drunken, gun waving wreck of a girlfriend from hurting herself. This, he explains, is why he was sent home while she was sent to jail.
As for the four police officers who later told the Senate Ethics Committee that he avoided jail because he invoked legislative immunity from arrest that night? Setup job. They all lied and hid information that would have proved him to be the victim.
“They assumed that even a falling-down drunk woman is to be believed over a sober man showing multiple bleeding wounds about his face and torn clothing,” the lawsuit says. “They construed all facts against the male involved in the event.”
The lawsuit contains no mention of the five independent witnesses on the road that night, all of whom later testified that he was the aggressor once the fight spilled into public view. In his earlier claim for $10 million, Bundgaard contended that they were tainted, one and all, by media coverage.
The lawsuit tells quite a story, complete with a number of “co-conspirators”, including then-Senate Ethics Chairman Ron Gould, a trio of attorneys who worked on the ethics investigation and the police department’s polygraph expert, who testified that lie-detector test produced by Bundgaard was a joke.
Among the city’s transgressions: lying to the media, conspiring with the Senate Ethics Committee, disclosing his brush with crime as a young man, blindsiding him with what he claims is false testimony about a previous assault on his girlfriend and oh yeah, hiding records that would have “vindicated” him.
Near as I can tell, he’s referring to a one-page report by a Phoenix motorcycle officer who wrote that Bundgaard wasn’t impaired the night of the freeway fight. Several other officers had said they detected alcohol on the senator’s breath. The motorcycle officer’s report was released in June 2011, but Team Bundgaard didn’t get it, despite several public-records requests.
Clearly, there is only one explanation: Everybody had it in for Bundgaard.
To recap, the ex-girlfriend is lying, at least five police officers are lying and five witnesses are either lying or brainwashed. All part of some built-in bias against men and a dastardly plot by the city to bury Scott Bundgaard, who is coming up on year two of keeping this two-day story in the news.
“The Defendants’ and their co-conspirators’ conduct caused Plaintiff the loss of his reputation for honesty, integrity, non-violence and fair treatment of women,” the lawsuit says. “Their conduct has made it impossible for Plaintiff to find suitable work not only in Arizona, but also within the United States.”
Well, somebody’s conduct did anyway.
Big charges, but does Scott Bundgaard have proof?
Source
Posted on December 20, 2012 1:40 pm by Joanna Allhands
Big charges, but does Scott Bundgaard have proof?
If it’s true, there’s a movie just waiting to be made out of Scott Bundgaard’s 48-page lawsuit.
The former state Senate majority leader is suing Phoenix because, he claims, everyone from the former mayor and police chief on down was working together to destroy his good name.
There’s a lot of conspiracy in the lawsuit stated as fact. For example:
Phoenix Det. Bryn “Ray knew that she had failed and refused to interview exculpatory witnesses who would support the initial officer’s conclusion that Plaintiff was a victim.”
And Sen. Ron “Gould intended to use the Senate Ethics Committee Hearing process to cause the removal or resignation of Plaintiff so as to clear the path for a political crony to fill the Plaintiff’s Senate seat.”
Those are serious claims. But does Bundgaard have the proof to back them up? There’s not much offered in the lawsuit.
My guess: Because this is a civil case, it’ll never see trial. And we’ll never know.
Previous articles on Arizona Senator Scott Bundgaard.