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Dr. Mark A. Flomenbaum, who was fired last year as Massachusetts's chief medical examiner after his office misplaced a body, has filed a lawsuit contending that Governor Deval Patrick lacked grounds to dismiss him.
The forensic pathologist sued in Suffolk Superior Court, but in an unusual move, the Supreme Judicial Court has agreed to hear arguments in the case ahead of any potential trial because of important legal questions raised by the dispute.
Flomenbaum, 58, says he uprooted his family from Connecticut to accept an offer by Governor Mitt Romney in January 2005 to run the long-troubled office. Flomenbaum says he signed a five-year agreement and could only be fired for serious wrongdoing or mismanagement and that the episode with the missing body did not rise to that.
Patrick dismissed him Aug. 1 after Flomenbaum's office misplaced the body of a Cape Cod man that State Police later found buried in another man's grave. Around the time of the firing, a consulting firm hired by the state said Flomenbaum's office was on the "verge of collapse" from extreme mismanagement.
The SJC is expected to hear the case by May, said a court clerk, and its ruling might determine whether the case goes to trial.
Among issues expected to be considered by the SJC is whether the agreement between Flomenbaum and the Romney administration was a contract that was legally binding on Romney's successor.
Flomenbaum says it was. But Attorney General Martha Coakley, whose office is defending the Patrick administration, says it was not and that the governor was within his rights to fire Flomenbaum under state law regarding the medical examiner's office.
"These are legal questions of great public interest," Coakley's office said in a recent court filing.
If Flomenbaum is right, her office said, a governor could sign a contract with a Cabinet member that would keep the appointee in the job long after the governor leaves office.
Flomenbaum and his lawyer, Thomas R. Kiley, declined to comment on the suit. A spokeswoman for Coakley said the attorney general's office does not discuss pending litigation.
Kyle Sullivan, a spokesman for Patrick, said the governor acted properly in firing Flomenbaum.
"The administration removed Dr. Flomenbaum for his failure to exercise effective management of the office, which included his unacceptable handling of the case involving a missing body," he said in a written statement. "The administration stands by its decision."
Flomenbaum filed his suit in September, a month after Patrick wrote him a letter saying he had lost confidence in his ability to manage the medical examiner's office.
Flomenbaum had been recruited from the medical examiner's office in New York City, where he enjoyed a top-notch reputation in the field of forensic pathology and gained national standing for his painstaking work after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center.
He said in an affidavit that he told the Romney administration he was "quite aware of the [office of the medical examiner's] horrific history," including years of underfunding and an episode in which the office sent the wrong set of eyeballs to an outside specialist for tests.
He said he agreed to move his family only after the administration promised to dramatically increase funding, gave him a term of five years, and set reasonable goals for him. The medical examiner was paid $168,269 in 2005.
Although Flomenbaum made progress revamping the office, he quickly ruffled law enforcement officials, including some district attorneys.
And then last March an increase in autopsies caused unclaimed bodies to pile up in the agency's overcrowded Boston headquarters and in a refrigerated truck parked behind the building in the South End.
In addition, the office acknowledged that the plumbing system had clogged, resulting in pools of blood on the autopsy room floor, and basic supplies ran out periodically, including body bags and toe tags.
Following those reports. Patrick's public safety secretary, Kevin M. Burke, ordered Flomenbaum to turn over all unclaimed bodies within two weeks to state welfare officials, who handle burials for the homeless, and to the US Department of Veterans Affairs, which provides burials for veterans whose bodies are unclaimed.
Then came Flomenbaum's macabre admission May 3 that his office had lost a corpse pathologists had examined days earlier. The Patrick administration immediately suspended Flomenbaum and fired him three months later.
In the dismissal letter, Patrick wrote that "no question has been raised regarding your excellent reputation as a pathologist."
But it was equally clear, Patrick wrote, that Flomenbaum had displayed major shortcomings, "most prominently your unacceptable handling of the missing body situation."
In a scathing 36-page report released two days after the firing, Vance, a Virginia-based consulting firm, said the office had been so mismanaged that it was barely functioning.
Burke was blunter, calling Flomenbaum the worst public manager he had ever encountered.
Flomenbaum contends in his suit that the grounds Patrick cited for his firing were a smokescreen and that the governor really wanted him out because he had complained about underfunding. Although the budget for the office doubled over three years, Flomenbaum said it was still about half what it should be, according to national standards.
His case, which Justice Margot G. Botsford is expected to refer to the full court shortly, is not the first time the SJC has waded into a dispute over a governor's firing of an officeholder before it goes to trial.
Six years ago, the SJC heard arguments in a dispute between Acting Governor Jane Swift and two members of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority board whom she dismissed after they voted to delay a scheduled toll increase.
The high court ruled that Swift overstepped her powers when she fired Christy Mihos and Jordan Levy and ordered them reinstated.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com.
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