23-05-2025
Massachusetts jury says Bloomberg campaign broke promise to 2020 staffer, must pay him $56,000
A Middlesex County jury on Thursday awarded Nygel O'Bannon, a former campaign field organizer for the Medford-raised billionaire, $56,000 in compensation, finding that Bloomberg's campaign breached its contract. With interest on the back pay, O'Bannon is owed close to $90,000, according to his attorney, Shannon Liss-Riordan.
The decision could prompt others who worked for the former New York City mayor's campaign to seek their own claims and possibly widen the fallout from what so far has been a five-year legal battle.
'There was a promise made to the campaign staff nationwide, and it was breached. My phone is now ringing off the hook,' said Liss-Riordan, a well-known labor attorney who herself ran for US Senate and Massachusetts attorney general.
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'People left their jobs on short notice, they gave up jobs they loved, they packed up and moved across the country,' she said. 'And they wouldn't have done this for a very short term gig.'
An attorney who represented Bloomberg's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
A copy of an interview-notes template used by the campaign in hiring field organizers, and referenced in the original Massachusetts lawsuit, described providing 'full health, dental and vision benefits' and 'employment through November 2020 with Team Bloomberg.' It added that workers wouldn't be guaranteed to stay in the state they were currently in.
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Liss-Riordan said roughly 55 to 60 people were hired to work in Massachusetts alone.
Bloomberg, who joined the Democratic field in November 2019, ultimately
According to the complaint filed in Massachusetts, Bloomberg's campaign had told staff he intended to create a political action committee to help defeat President Trump in competitive states. The Massachusetts workers said they were told they could work for the PAC, and one told the Globe in 2020 that he and others filled out a survey of which states they would like to work in.
But former staffers said that disappeared, too, on March 20, 2020, when they were told they were being laid off and would receive their last paychecks by the end of that month.
The same day, Bloomberg announced he was
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But some staff, including some who filed the original lawsuit in Massachusetts, received no response and were not hired by another campaign, according to the complaint.
Three other former staffers had originally filed the lawsuit with O'Bannon. But only he was allowed to go to trial because, a judge ruled, he could show he had evidence that his then-supervisor on the campaign had 'reassured' him he would be employed through 2020.
'I hope that Mike Bloomberg will now just do the right thing,' Liss-Riordan said Friday. The verdict shows that 'justice can take a while. . . . It's too bad this had to go through the legal process .'
Matt Stout can be reached at
