Watchung police officer's harassment lawsuit against former chief tossed again
WATCHUNG – A borough police officer has lost the appeal of the dismissal of his lawsuit claiming he was harassed by the former police chief.
A state appellate court ruled that Superior Court Judge Thomas Miller properly dismissed the suit brought by Officer Michael Dolinski in August 2019.
Dolinski alleged in the lawsuit that he was subjected to harassment by former Chief Joseph Cina over several years starting in 2009 when Cina was a lieutenant. Cina retired in 2021 after 27 years in the department.
Dolinski joined the police department in 2005, was assigned to the county SWAT team in 2008 and was appointed a watch commander in 2015.
But in 2017 Cina, who had become chief, removed Dolinski from the SWAT team because of his "abuse of sick time," according to court papers. In the lawsuit, Dolinski said he was removed from the SWAT team because of complaints he made about Cina.
Over the years, court papers say, Dolinski complained to superior officers that Cina was pressuring him to write more tickets and make more arrests and threatened to remove him from the SWAT team if his "ticket numbers" did not improve.
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In 2019, Dolinski was interviewed by the Somerset County Prosecutor's Office about his complaints about Cina and improprieties within the police department.
Dolinski alleged Cina retaliated against him for making the complaints.
But the appellate court ruled that Miller properly dismissed Dolinski's lawsuit because he "did not assert facts to establish a violation of the New Jersey Civil Rights Act." Miller ruled that Dolinski's complaints to the prosecutor's office were not protected speech under the law because they only related to his employment conditions.
The appellate court also agreed with Miller that Dolinski's claim under the state's Conscientious Employee Act were barred by the law's one-year statute of limitations. Miller wrote that Dolinski's allegations "amount to nothing more than routine workplace disputes about internal policy and management style."
In addition, Miller wrote, Dolinski did not produce any evidence that the lawsuit "was based on anything more than workplace grievances" and did not qualify as whistleblowing activity protected under the law.
Email: mdeak@mycentraljersey.com
Mike Deak is a reporter for mycentraljersey.com. To get unlimited access to his articles on Somerset and Hunterdon counties, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
This article originally appeared on MyCentralJersey.com: Watchung police officer's lawsuit against former chief tossed again
