EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated to reflect the accurancy of one misheard word in previously referenced quote.
An ousted Marine City administrator is suing the community for breach of contract alleging copies of a 2021 investigative personnel report leaked on Facebook this summer included information that could damage her personal and professional reputations.
Holly Tatman was fired as city manager last January after the City Commission voted to terminate her contract.
In a complaint filed in late September, two years after her stint with the city began, the former official claims that documents marked “attorney-client privileged communication” made their way onto the social media platform — airing details surrounding the shift in a background check prior to her hire that were never meant to be seen by the public.
Requests for comment to Tatman and her attorney, Heidi Sharp, were not returned this week.
Marine City attorney Robert Davis said he had to decline comment because of the pending litigation.
Weeks after the City Commission agreed to hire Tatman as manager in late summer 2021, officials weighed bringing in the Michigan State Police or another third party to investigate a breakdown in communication over Tatman’s background check, which had been less vigorous than they intended.
According to the lawsuit, Marine City’s treasurer and finance director at the time had also applied for the manager position and learned Tatman hadn’t undergone the right level of a check.
An attorney from the firm Fisher Phillips later spoke with multiple employees, the complaint states, as part of an investigation into the matter “after a threat of litigation was made by a then-current employee.”
The complaint alleges that the report “repeatedly disparages and denigrates” Tatman, “raising allegations of harassment and retaliation against” her as lodged by the former finance director.
Specifically, that includes allegations about Tatman that claim she humiliated an employee in front of the whole office and that a former employee said she would “drive wedges” in personnel relations, as well as question her job performance as the village manager in Lexington.
City commissioners reportedly met in a closed session in November 2021 to review the report in question. After commissioners were asked to return their copies of the report, Tatman’s complaint alleges Commissioner Lisa Hendrick, currently the commission's mayor pro tem, “refused” and “left the meeting with it in her possession.”
Because the city never waived attorney-client privilege on the report, it is not eligible for release through Freedom of Information Act requests and considered not public.
The lawsuit alleges Hendrick shared her copy of the report, including with Commissioner Mike Hilferink, who had not yet been elected to office. Hilferink was elected in 2022.
After Marine City voted to terminate Tatman’s contract on Jan. 16 of this year, she entered into a severance and release agreement with the city the following month.
Included in that Feb. 20 agreement, the lawsuit states, is a neutral reference provision, requiring the city and its elected officials not to disparage Tatman to any third party, media outlet or government entity, nor on any social media platform, in connection to her employment as city manager.
Citing Hilferink as the administrator and moderator for a Facebook group — the page, set to private, is labeled as a platform for "citizens for transparency" in downriver communities, including Marine City — the lawsuit claims he allowed anonymous comments this summer with posts containing images of individual report pages among them.
Although Hilferink has publicly claimed he did not leak the report documents himself, Tatman’s complaint postures that the city commissioner’s own Facebook commentary and page oversight allowing that documents to be shared violate that neutral reference provision.
Hilferink is facing a potential ousting from office, as the City Commission considers a resolution this Thursday to set a hearing and initiate the process to expel him under Marine City’s charter.
Hendrick, who herself survived an unsuccessful ousting attempt earlier in November 2021, has publicly expressed concern about the impact of sharing non-public, attorney-client-privileged information.
“The problem is you keep violating the rights of our poor employees, and we have an obligation to protect these employees. And I think everybody needs to understand that,” Hendrick told Hilferink last month. “We can’t specify some of the things he’s been saying about these employees. You cannot do it, Mike. It’s a violation of the rules.”
That was during city commissioners’ Sept. 21 meeting. At the time, officials were unaware Tatman’s complaint had been filed against the city just two days prior.
The litigation has not been discussed in closed session by officials.
The City Commission meets at 7 p.m. on Thursday at 260 S. Parker St. in Marine City. Adgenda materials can be found at https://www.cityofmarinecity.org.
Contact Jackie Smith at (810) 989-6270 or jssmith@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: Ousted Marine City manager alleging breach of contract in lawsuit
