Baker City Fire Chief Todd Jaynes being sworn into service on July 25, 2023. 

An attorney defending Baker City in former fire chief Todd Jaynes’ $999,999 civil suit against the city has asked a judge for the second time to dismiss the complaint.

Kirk Mylander, an attorney for CIS of Tigard, the city’s insurance provider, filed a motion for summary judgment on June 20.

He filed a similar motion in September 2024, about two months after Jaynes sued the city on July 6, 2024. Judge Matt Shirtcliff denied Mylander’s motion for summary judgement in November 2024, after hearing oral arguments from Mylander and from Jaynes’ attorney, Richard Slezak.

Slezak on July 9 filed a response objecting to Mylander’s motion for summary judgment.

Oral arguments on the motion are scheduled for July 25 at 1:30 p.m. at the courthouse, 1995 Third St. A jury trial is scheduled to start Sept. 15.

Jon France, then the city’s interim manager, hired Jaynes in July 2023.

Barry Murphy, who started as city manager in January 2024, fired Jaynes on March 8, 2024.

Jaynes sued the city four months later, claiming France misled him into believing that Jaynes, who moved to Baker City from Jerome, Idaho, could have the chief’s job for at least five years, and even longer if he wanted to stay.

Jaynes is seeking $899,999 in economic damages and $100,000 in noneconomic damages.

Mylander, representing the city, has argued that France didn’t mislead Jaynes. Mylander has mentioned, both in written filings and in oral arguments, that Jaynes signed an employment contract that allows the city to fire Jaynes, without cause, so long as it pays him a severance equal to three months of his salary, $21,129.

Jaynes said during a deposition that the city paid him that amount after he was fired.

“At best it’s a case about a verbal misunderstanding, which is exactly why agreements are reduced to writing and why writings, not contrary oral statements, are enforced by the courts,” Mylander wrote in his June 20 motion for summary judgment.

The hearing on Mylander’s motion isn’t the only thing on the docket for Jaynes’ lawsuit.

On July 8, Luke Reese of the Garrett Hemann Robertson law firm in Salem filed a notice that he is replacing Mylander as the city’s attorney.

Three days later, on July 11, Reese filed a motion to postpone the trial from its scheduled start on Sept. 15.

Reese wrote in his motion that he “seeks time to become sufficiently familiar with the case to effectively and efficiently present the matter to a jury.”

Reese also wrote that he has other professional commitments scheduled for the week in September when the trial in Jaynes’ suit is supposed to happen.

According to court records, Slezak opposes the request to postpone the trial. Both attorneys have asked a judge to schedule a hearing about whether or not to delay the trial.

Reese recently represented Baker City, and former city manager Jonathan Cannon, in a lawsuit filed in 2023 by a former firefighter, Jason Bybee, who claimed the city fired him in retaliation because he wasn’t able to work after contracting COVID-19 on the job.

On March 20 of this year, a jury awarded Bybee $200,000 in damages. He was asking for $800,000.

Jaynes’ tenure as fire chief, firing and lawsuit

France, who served as interim city manager in 2023 after Jonathan Cannon resigned, hired Jaynes.

On July 25, 2023, both Jaynes and France signed an employment contract with a minimum period of five years, “unless cause for termination or if Jaynes resigns.”

Late in 2023 the Baker City Council hired Murphy as city manager.

Although Murphy declined to say publicly why he fired Jaynes on March 8, 2024, according to the motion that Mylander filed June 20, 2025, seeking to dismiss the lawsuit, Murphy told Jaynes, before firing him, that he was not satisfied with Jaynes’ performance and that Jaynes wasn’t fully licensed as a firefighter in Oregon.

In the lawsuit Jaynes filed July 6, 2024, his attorney, Slezak, wrote that Jaynes, in a July 7, 2023, interview with France, told France he needed a contract for at least five years. Jaynes also objected to the clause that allowed a city manager to fire him for “convenience.”

According to the lawsuit, France, in response to Jaynes’ concern about the convenience clause, told him it was a formality.

Jaynes contends in the lawsuit that the city “included the condition of the convenience clause in the employment agreement for its benefit, but waived that condition when France advised plaintiff that including the convenience clause in the employment agreement was only a formality…”

Jaynes contends that France, the city council and Murphy were negligent because they didn’t recognize that the convenience clause was “irreconcilably inconsistent” with the employment agreement’s minimum duration of five years.

City’s first attempt to dismiss suit

Mylander argued in a Nov. 1, 2024, hearing that the contract Jaynes signed in July 2023 was not binding because none of the city councilors then was still in office when Murphy fired Jaynes in March 2024.

Mylander also told Baker County Circuit Court Judge Matt Shirtcliff that even if the contract was binding, the city did not breach the contract’s terms when Murphy fired Jaynes.

Slezak argued that the contract was binding and that Jon France, who was interim city manager when Jaynes signed the contract, misled Jaynes and induced him to sign the pact.

Shirtcliff rejected Mylander’s motion, writing that the issues the attorneys raised about the contract were matters of “material fact” that should be decided at trial.

City’s second attempt to dismiss suit

In the June 20 motion for summary judgment, Mylander notes that although Jaynes objects to the convenience clause in his contract, he “accepted and spent the severance pay provided by the very clause he now claims was fraudulently included. He has not returned the funds and cannot show he suffered compensable damages distinct from the consequences of a termination authorized under the contract.”

Slezak, in a response to Mylander’s motion, wrote that France, as interim city manager, was not authorized under the city charter to negotiate the contract with Jaynes. As a result, Slezak argues, the contract was not legal or enforceable.

“This case is not mere ‘verbal misunderstanding’ between the parties,” Slezak wrote.