Trustee Sues Grossmont School District : Litigation: Thomas Davies seeks attorneys’ fees and damages after an unsuccessful challenge to his election.

A trustee of the Grossmont Union High School District whom the school board last year had tried to prevent from taking office has sued the district, its previous superintendent and several of its board members for attorneys’ fees and punitive damages.

Thomas Davies had been elected to the school board of the East County school district in November, 1990, but the school board challenged his election, pointing to a 1988 settlement between the district and Davies and his wife, in which the couple agreed to never seek future employment or position with the district in any capacity, according to the lawsuit filed earlier this week in Superior Court.

“They pretty much hurt him lots of ways, and he wants to be compensated for that,” said one of Davies’ attorneys, Kenneth Klein.

In 1988, Davies’ wife, Nadia, a teacher in the district for more than 20 years, had a dispute with a new principal over his approach to certain educational policies. She contends that the principal retaliated by transferring her. During the dispute, Thomas Davies began campaigning against the incumbent board members in the 1988 election.

The Davieses first sued the district in January, 1988, accusing the district of retaliating against them for charging the school board and superintendent with misuse of funds and poor management of the district.

The 1988 settlement, which included the clause forbidding the Davies from pursuing any position with the district, also entailed the district’s paying the Davieses $39,200 and Nadia Davies’ resignation from the district.

Almost two years after the settlement, in August, 1990, Thomas Davies declared his candidacy for the Grossmont Union High school board. He appeared before the school board on several occasions and publicly identified himself as a candidate.

The board, however, did not enforce the tenets of the 1988 settlement at the time.

It wasn’t until after Davies finished first among six candidates in the November, 1990, election that it attempted to prevent him from taking his place on the board through a lawsuit.

The school board won the first round of litigation in U.S. District Court, but Davies won on appeal and was allowed to take his place on the board.

Now, Davies is suing the district and the then-members of the board for an unspecified amount for purportedly causing “severe emotional distress” as well as conspiring to keep him from taking his rightful place on the board, according to the suit.

Don Hunsaker II, who is mentioned as a defendant in the suit and stepped down from the board last year, denied that there was ever any intention to retaliate against the Davieses.

“Most of us had what we considered to be a close personal relationship with his wife,” said Hunsaker, who had served on the board for 12 years and described Nadia Davies as “a good teacher at the district.”