Finally before a judge, lawyers spar over Ansaldi’s allegations

Attorneys for former Acton Chief Financial Officer Anthony Ansaldi say their client blew the whistle on financial wrongdoing — and Town Manager Kerry Lafleur fired him for it.

With claims finally before a judge this month, defense lawyer Brian Fleming said the case was about job performance, not retaliation. 

Ansaldi “was just being held to the standard of doing his job,” Fleming said.

The town placed Ansaldi on leave last summer. He filed a whistleblower notice before his formal firing in the fall and sued in December.

Ansaldi named the town and Lafleur as defendants. The defense wants a Middlesex Superior Court judge to toss out the counts that specifically target the town manager. 

Neither Ansaldi nor his ex-boss attended the July 8’s session in Woburn. The hearing was the first courthouse action after roughly a year of escalating legal broadsides.

Ansaldi says he found and objected to finance issues, including “unwarranted” Social Security payments for non-pensionable employees.  

His attorneys argue that officials retaliated by pressuring him to resign, fabricating performance concerns, putting him on leave, and firing him.

“He was directed to do something that he believed to be unlawful,” Ansaldi’s attorney, Jared Burke, said last Wednesday. “He refused, and defendant Lafleur responded with threats [and] coercion.” 

“It just goes to the malice that exists and the retaliatory animus that defendant Lafleur had,” Burke told Judge Julie Green. 

Fleming, the defense attorney, said a “neutral party” attended an employment hearing last fall and determined Ansaldi would be fired “because he wasn’t performing his job” to the town’s standards.

Ansaldi’s lawsuit complaint generally stayed “vague” and doesn’t back up claims that Lafleur broke state civil rights law, Fleming said. 

There’s also scant evidence on a count of intentional infliction or emotional distress, he said, and an intentional interference with advantageous business relations count should be rejected because it’s too similar to the last charge of violating whistleblower protections.

For now, the defense isn’t seeking to dismiss the whistleblower claim that Ansaldi has leveled against the town. 

Both sides sketched arguments in memos this spring. They pushed their appearance into the summer due to a scheduling conflict, per a court filing.

Judge Green took the request under advisement and hadn’t ruled as of press time, court records showed.

This was “the first of many motions to come,” Ansaldi’s attorney, Burke, told The Acton Bridge as both sides settle in for what could be years of litigation.

Lafleur has said she’s limited in what she can say publicly, but “the town disputes the allegations,” and officials will respond “through the appropriate legal process”

The town had to square up its budget in recent weeks after overspending on legal fees in the now-finished 2026 fiscal year. Officials paid labor counsel in the run-up to Ansaldi’s firing, Lafleur told The Bridge last month. Unrelated affairs also racked up bills.

Now that Ansaldi has sued, the town’s insurance is covering costs, and Lafleur estimated that Acton had paid “about half” of its $10,000 deductible as of late June.