Thursday, May 28, 2015

Lawsuit Reveals How Mourdock Tried To Lock His Successor Into Three-Year Contract With His Chief Deputy

Some would consider it a pretty dirty move on former State Treasurer Richard Mourdock and his chief deputy and former general counsel's part. Mourdock, who did not seek re-election as State Treasurer last year because he was term-limited, signed a three-year employment contract with his chief deputy and general counsel, Jim Holden, to serve as counsel to the Indiana Board of Depositories at $100,000 a year on terms very favorable to Holden. The contract was signed last June after Holden lost a bitter primary battle in a Boone County judicial race and was to take effect on Mourdock's last day in office.

As it turned out, Mourdock chose to resign his office several months before the end of his term in order to take advantage of a retirement benefit scheduled to expire days before his resignation. Mourdock's elected successor, Kelly Mitchell, a former co-worker of Holden, accused Holden of engaging in unethical conduct and violating state conflict of interest rules. She fired him and had him escorted from the State House by State Police before his 3-year contract could take effect. Holden is now suing Mitchell, claiming she breached the contract and violated a federal law protecting U.S. serviceman from adverse employment actions because of active duty service. Holden was scheduled to be called up in December 2014 for active duty as a National Guardsman. His contract provided that his 3-year contract was to be credited an additional 2 days for each day of active military duty he served.

Holden claims in a lawsuit he filed recently in Marion County that Mitchell fired him in violation of the federal USERRA law and breached his employment contract. Holden is asking a a Marion Co. judge to enforce his employment contract and sanction Mitchell for violating USERRA. The Attorney General's Office is representing Mitchell in the lawsuit in her capacity as a statewide officeholder. Mourdock should be holding his head in shame for participating in this stunt, but I doubt he is.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry Mr Holden, Indiana is an employment at will state. You loose, just like Murdock!

Anonymous said...

It's a shame so many people wasted their vote on Mourdock...and on Donnelly.
This whole two-faced system of corruption needs to be thrown out.

Jerry Titus said...

It looks like Holden collected a net salary of around $3000 every two weeks from the campaign July - Sept of 2012. Probably more as this is the only doc I reviewed.

I wonder if he was on an official leave of absence from his job with the State of Indiana during the campaign....

http://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/001/12020880001/12020880001.pdf