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“Oh, what a wicked web we weave, when once we practice to deceive” -- Sir Walter Scott
The headline in the Courant story must be concerning to the defense: “Judge orders CT regulatory agency to explain statements in controversial utility lawsuit.”
Public Utility Regulatory Authority (PURA) chief Marissa Gillett and her defense lawyers in William Tong’s Attorney General’s office, no strangers to litigation, have a “discovery” problem with Superior Court Judge Matthew Budzik. And it appears that Budzik is not one of those judges willing to accept gladly seeming fools who contravene his court orders.
“A judge [Budzik],” the Hartford Courant tell us, “has ordered a lawyer defending the state’s chief utility regulator to appear in court and explain why she denied possessing any electronic records concerning authorship of a controversial, anti-utility opinion column when she knew an automatic deletion program she activated on her telephone would have destroyed those records.”
At issue before the judge is a possible – some would say probable -- violation of the discovery doctrine, a cornerstone of all jurisprudence. Judges may and should enforce the doctrine by applying sanctions to defense or prosecution lawyers and their clients who withhold pertinent evidence in discovery procedures.
Discovery allows all legal contestants access to trial information before civil or criminal hearings. By so doing, it erects a protective barrier that prevents either side in a legal dispute from weaving deceptive legal webs.
In his order issued to Gillett and her Attorney General council, Budzik wrote, “Attorneys have a duty to opposing counsel to make reasonably diligent efforts to comply with discovery orders, including making reasonable inquiry of their clients,” Budzik wrote. “Counsel for PURA should be prepared to address their efforts to comply with these obligations…”
The Courant notes, “The order by Superior Court Judge Matthew Budzik raises the possibility of sanctions against Public Utility Regulatory Authority chief Marissa Gillett’s lawyers for allegedly misleading the court about PURA’s compliance with the judge’s orders to produce records associated with a utility industry suit.”
The utility industry suit makes several claims. Among them, the suit brought by two Avangrid natural gas subsidiaries alleges that Gillett has unilaterally slashed the rates of two Connecticut energy distributors. Gillett’s price control demands are, the plaintiffs allege, biased. “The suit,” the Courant tells us, “is part of a history of antagonism between Gillett and the industry over adverse decisions that the utilities argue are based on misapplication of regulatory law.”
Partial proof of an anti-utility bias, the companies allege, may be found in the tangled web of communications that connects Gillett to an op-ed piece purportedly written by two pro-PURA legislators – chairmen of the Legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee, Sen. Norm Needelman, D-Essex, and Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport.
“To support their claim,” the Courant tells us, “the utilities refer to a text message exchange involving Gillett that strongly suggests she may have collaborated with two legislative supporters on a news opinion column or op-ed that castigated the utility industry.”
A Gillett text message to Steinberg and his response to her, obtained by the Courant on an FOI [Freedom of Information] ruling after the customarily long bureaucratic delay, suggest collusion between the three actors. Gillett writes to Steinberg, “I finished my draft and (sic) waiting for Theresa and others to put eyes on it before sending to you and norm hopefully later today. Thank you!” Steinberg replies: “Great on both counts. I debated sending you the PBR idea to your private email, which I thought I did weeks ago but you apparently didn’t receive. Not to put you on the spot. I’m at UI in the morning but should be available to review release/op Ed.”
The communication piqued the curiosity of both Judge Budzik and defense lawyers for Avangrid who saw in the email an indication of collusion that supported one of the claims made in their suit. Discovery alarm bells ringing, the judge ordered Gillett and her defense attorney in Tong’s Attorney General Office to disclose all other relevant emails.
Gillett responded that her office had searched diligently and there were no such emails. Later she disclosed that traces of such emails may have disappeared from a newly purchased phone that had been set to delete emails after (30) days. Judge Budzik did not find the dog-ate-my-emails gambit convincing.
And so – here we are. Discovery protocols require Gillett and Tong’s defense council to share information at their disposal with plaintiffs bringing the court action. The presiding judge is rightly disturbed.
Concerning Gillett’s new phone that automatically deleted after 30 days the discovery matter Budzik months earlier had ordered Gillett and her Tong supplied defense lawyer to surrender to the plaintiffs Budzik wrote, “In other words, when PURA represented to the plaintiff and to the court in May and June of 2025 that Chairperson Gillett had no documents concerning the December 19th op-ed, any potentially responsive documents on Chairperson Gillett’s phone already would have been deleted by activation of the 30 day auto-delete function.”
At some point -- likely in the distant future, when all the discovery matter has been released or surreptitiously leaked to a curious and impatient media -- the matter should prove newsworthy.
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