Court sides with ice rink in Saugus dispute

SAUGUS – The town has been frozen out of a four-year battle over management of the Kasabuski rink.”It’s disappointing,” said Town Manager Scott Crabtree. “Sometimes the courts get it wrong, and I think the courts got it wrong.”The town terminated its contract with Dan Maniff and John Curley in 2010 claiming that they failed to comply with procedures for allocating ice time, charged fees in excess of those permitted in the lease, made arbitrary changes to ice time, failed to provide monthly and fiscal year reports, and failed to provide insurance for the remainder of the lease. The town was found at fault and in the years since a trial court, appeals court and an appellate review all sided with Neil Rossman’s clients.Selectman Stephen Castinetti said he finds it disgraceful that Crabtree believes the court got it wrong “four times.” He also called Crabtree’s pursuit of the case fiscally irresponsible.Rossman, Maniff’s attorney, said a six-day superior court trial determined the charges to be trumped up and what he characterized as a personal quest of Crabtree’s.The February 2012 ruling by a Suffolk Superior Court Judge stated that Maniff and Curley did in fact default on certain obligations but none of the breaches met the standard for a “material breach,” thus warranting a termination of the lease. Therefore it found overall that the town wrongfully terminated the lease.”The town’s claim was a thinly veiled attempt to find fault with the plaintiffs’ performance regardless of the importance of the alleged non-compliance,” wrote then Superior Court Judge Geraldine Hines.The town appealed the decision through four courts spending in excess of $200,000 in the process.”It just doesn’t make any sense to me to spend in excess of $200,000 to appeal an $18,000 judgment,” Castinetti said.Rossman also said the original damages the town was required to pay Maniff and Curley – $21,500, $18,000 in damages and roughly $3,500 in court fees – have now risen.”They are up to $32,000,” he said.Crabtree, however, said although the town lost the issue, it is not over. He said the Department of Conservation and Recreation is holding the town liable for the issues that Maniff and Curley have continued to fail to address.”It’s the same issues,” he said. “We’re sort of stuck in the middle because we’re stuck in this long-term lease.”He said he is still hopeful, and he is open to working with the rink management to remedy the situation.”The town is liable, and I don’t think people understand that,” Crabtree said. “It’s a tough situation.”Castinetti said Crabtree should have stopped when he was ahead at the $18,000 judgment.He said he was all for fighting the good fight, “but if you lose, you take your lumps, you learn from it and you move on. You don’t spend one-quarter of a million dollars to defend an $18,000 judgment.”