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LL will say this for former D.C. Housing Finance Agency boss Harry Sewell: He’s got chutzpah. After getting canned last year following LL’s stories about his extravagant corporate card use ($1,300 at a Miami Beach night club!), Sewell sued the District for breach of contract, claiming that using his agency credit card for personal expenses didn’t break any rules.
Unluckily for Sewell, though, the District’s Office of the Attorney General isn’t having it. If anything, OAG’s new motion to dismiss Sewell’s lawsuit makes it look like the former housing director is lucky that the District isn’t suing him.
Sewell’s lawsuit comes with multiple claims against the District, including the idea that the agency harmed his reputation by allegedly rushing through his dismissal process after he was put on administrative leave for as much as $70,000 of unexplained credit card charges. (Sewell maintains that he reimbursed the agency for personal expenses.) But as OAG’s motion points out by referencing LL’s articles about Sewell, Sewell’s reputation wasn’t the only one at stake when he allegedly spent, say, more than $300 at luxury shoe store Allen Edmonds.
“Indeed, the reputation of the Agency was questioned as a result of [Sewell’s] unaccounted-for spending activity,” the motion reads.
An OAG spokesman declined to talk about the lawsuit, while Sewell attorney‘s Billy Martin did not respond to a request for comment.
[documentcloud url=”https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1202534-case-2014-ca-002287-b-docket-6-16-2014-civmdf.html”]
Credit card photo by Shutterstock
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