FAIRFIELD – The town has agreed to pay a settlement to the founder of the Police Department’s domestic violence unit who claimed she was subjected to a hostile work environment for investigating allegations of domestic violence against a Norwalk police officer.
Details of the settlement with Kerry Dalling were unavailable. Her lawyer, John Bochanis, and Fairfield officials declined comment, and Fairfield officials rejected a request under the state’s Freedom of Information Act for details of the settlement.
According to court documents a settlement was reached following mediation with retired judge Theodore Tyma.
Dalling has been a Fairfield police officer since 1997 and a detective since 2001. In 2007 she created the department’s domestic violence unit.
But on Oct. 8, 2021, she was told she was no longer investigating domestic violence cases and ordered to vacate her office, according to her lawsuits filed in Superior Court in Bridgeport.
Dalling retired from the Fairfield Police Department in August 2022, seven months after she filed her first lawsuit. She filed a second lawsuit in January 2023 alleging a hostile work environment.
According to the lawsuit, Dalling wrote an email to the lieutenant in charge of Fairfield’s detective bureau, raising concerns about the department’s investigation of an alleged domestic violence incident involving an officer from “another jurisdiction.” Court documents show that officer is from the Norwalk Police Department.
“The plaintiff’s concerns included the thoroughness of the investigation and mishandling of potential evidence pertaining to the domestic violence investigation,” according to the suit.
Shortly after raising her concerns, Dalling alleges that she was told by her superiors that “she was spending too much time with the victims’ advocates from the Domestic Violence Center.” The lawsuit also claims that Dalling was then excluded from detective bureau meetings and activities.
In her suit, Dalling claims she told her supervisor, Lt. Matthew Riendeau, that she believed her reassignment was the result of her prior complaint that co-workers had created a hostile work environment by making inappropriate sexual comments to her, including in front of him.
In response, the suit claims Riendeau told Dalling he was unaware that sexual comments were being made in his presence because “he was probably thinking about how delicious his sandwich was he was ready to bite into.”
After the meeting with Riendeau the suit states that sexually inappropriate conduct and comments continued in Dalling’s presence in the detective bureau.
According to the suit, on Sept. 6, 2021, “an Instagram account was posted describing [Dalling] as a feminist who once caused a man to kill himself.”
During a remote hearing in court in February, a lawyer for the Fairfield Police Department urged the judge to dismiss the case, arguing that Dalling’s retaliation claim shouldn’t go to trial because she didn’t actually suffer harm from the reassignment.
“There was no adverse employment action,” the lawyer told the judge. “The reassignment didn’t change her salary, her rank, her benefits. The only thing it changed was a minor adjustment in schedule and she could no longer utilize an office. She had a cubicle.”
Bochanis countered that Dalling’s supervisors should have done more in response to her complaints regarding sexual comments made by other detectives. He told the judge that Dalling’s reassignment adversely affected her by changing her shift times and overtime opportunities — and that legal precedent agreed.