Telegraph file photo by DEAN SHALHOUP Nashua resident Laurie Ortolano, who is suing the city over allegations of right-to-know violations, speaks at a Board of Aldermen meeting several months ago.

NASHUA – An apparent misunderstanding between the lawyers in resident Laurie Ortolano’s right-to-know lawsuit against the city prompted the judge to continue a recent hearing until later this month.

Ortolano, the Berkeley Street resident who two years ago took her ongoing issues with the city’s assessing system public, including hiring a private investigator to follow a veteran assessor she accused of working far fewer hours than he was paid for and other related workplace violations, filed the right-to-know suit in February after she said she was repeatedly denied access to certain public documents.

The recent misunderstanding, according to Ortolano’s attorney, Richard Lehmann, stems from the parties’ “divergent beliefs about the nature of the hearing,” which had been scheduled for May 6.

In a motion for clarification, which Lehmann filed in late April in response to Superior Court Judge Charles Temple’s April 1 order describing the May 6 hearing as “other proceeding,” Lehmann said he was under the impression the proceeding was to be a “merits hearing,” at which “the allegations in the complaint would be substantively addressed,” he wrote.

But when Lehmann contacted the city’s lawyer, Deputy City Attorney Celia Leonard, he learned she understood the hearing to be a “case structuring conference,” and, he wrote, Leonard forwarded a draft of her case-structuring order, which Lehmann said proposed “a two-day trial” to be held “more than a year from now.”

“It is thus clear that the parties have very different understandings of the timing and nature of the hearing scheduled for May 6,” Lehmann wrote.

Temple subsequently canceled the hearing, ordering the attorneys instead to file their case structuring stipulations by May 20.

Temple noted in the brief order that matters such as discovery, expert disclosure, motions and trial deadlines “shall be set within a six-month period.”

The lawsuit, which Lehmann filed Feb. 17 in Hillsborough County Superior Court South, accuses some assessing department employees, and then-newly-appointed administrative services director Kim Kleiner, of denying Ortolano information, various documents and videos that she asserts is public under the state’s right-to-know law.

Ortolano’s initial dispute with the assessing department, which played a role in the departure of former City Assessor Jon Duhamel, grew out of a disagreement with the department over the assessment of her Berkeley Street residence.

She raised the issue at various public meetings, including those of the Board of Assessors and Board of Aldermen, urging elected officials to investigate the assessing department and press Kleiner, the administrative services director, as to whether Ortolano was being treated fairly when she went to City Hall seeking information.

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Dean Shalhoup may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.