Oxford County says its sheriff made false allegations under oath in a lawsuit he filed against its elected officials after they petitioned the governor to remove him from office.
A county attorney asked a judge to order Oxford County Sheriff Christopher Wainwright to personally pay for the costs incurred in its defense of his “baseless” lawsuit given “the egregious nature” of his conduct. Before a judge could decide whether to personally sanction the sheriff, he and the county agreed on Monday to dismiss the lawsuit.
The legal fight marks the latest round of turmoil for the county and comes as Wainwright prepares to defend himself before the governor, who will decide whether to end his run as elected sheriff.
The Bangor Daily News has published three main investigations into the sheriff’s conduct that revealed how he improperly traded guns from evidence, allowed uncertified cops to continue working as school resource officers and rebuked a deputy who reported the sheriff for asking him to go easy on an acquaintance.
Oxford County and the Maine Criminal Justice Academy have followed with their own investigations within the last year, culminating on Feb. 7 with the Oxford County commissioners unanimously voting to ask Gov. Janet Mills to remove Wainwright from office, saying he had “acted outside of his legal authority” and potentially committed theft when he sold guns from the evidence room without first contacting the owners.
A public hearing on Wainwright’s potential removal will be held April 22 in Augusta. Then Mills will make a decision. She is the only person under the Maine Constitution who can pull elected sheriffs from office if she finds they are “not faithfully or efficiently performing any duty imposed on the sheriff by law.”
Wainwright’s March 12 lawsuit against Oxford County could factor into the debate about his removal, as he discusses its details in other paperwork submitted on the same day with the governor’s office in which he argues that Mills should drop the commissioners’ complaint against him.
Roughly a month after the commissioners recommended his removal, Wainwright filed a lawsuit in Oxford County Superior Court alleging they had violated a confidential settlement agreement from 2019.
He claimed that the county violated it by engaging in collective bargaining or pre-bargaining activities since the fall of 2023 without his knowledge or participation. As evidence, he provided a Feb. 23 email to him from the county’s executive assistant describing how the commissioners had given a raise to deputies but did not address a change in deputies’ schedules.
In his sworn statement to the court, Wainwright expressed confusion about the scheduling change, saying he couldn’t determine “with any degree of certainty” when the collective bargaining had taken place or “what the ‘scheduling issue’ is that the message refers to or why.”
As a result, he argued, the county had breached its confidential settlement agreement with him to the detriment of “my rights of petition and participation in the administration and operations of the Office of Sheriff and county government.” He asked the court to unseal the 2019 agreement, enforce it, and force the county to pay for his costs and attorney’s fees.
The county assailed Wainwright’s argument in its response, saying that, contrary to his statements under oath, the sheriff had not only known about the proposed changes in deputies’ schedules but was the one who brought up the need for them in the first place and had participated in all of the meetings with the labor team in which they were discussed. The labor management meetings were more general in nature and are not considered union bargaining sessions.
In fact, no collective bargaining has happened at all, as the county has reminded the sheriff several times, county attorney Amy Dieterich wrote in her response. The $1-per-hour pay increase given to deputies was not the subject of union bargaining but was rather approved directly by commissioners.
If Wainwright truly did not understand what was happening, he should have asked someone for clarification or reviewed his own emails in which the topics were also discussed, Dieterich wrote.
“Oxford County taxpayers should not be burdened by litigation costs every time its elected Sheriff forgets meetings or conversations, or because he chooses to be willfully ignorant of Oxford County operations,” she wrote.
“Rather than engage in a scintilla of good faith efforts to determine whether something had actually occurred, Sheriff Wainwright ran to the courthouse with false allegations made with no good grounds to support them that are a waste of time and money by the parties,” she said.
Wainwright declined an interview, saying he would not take questions outside of the hearing process defined by the governor.
His attorney, Jonathan Berry, said he had intended to withdraw the lawsuit, even before the county filed its response, due to Berry’s health concerns and not because the sheriff didn’t want to risk being sanctioned by a judge.
Wainwright could have found another lawyer, but, after he filed the lawsuit, “the sheriff has been looped back into the communications that were the subject matter of the motion, so it all became moot,” he said.
The sheriff’s agreement to dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice prevents him from refiling it in the future, whether with no attorney or the help of a different one, Dieterich said.
Maine Focus editor Erin Rhoda may be reached at [email protected].
