WOODSTOCK — A judge ruled Tuesday in favor of the Woodstock police chief that town officials have now failed twice to demote.
But he has decided to retire.
Judge Kerry McDonald-Cady ruled in favor of Joseph Swanson and ordered that any further demotion considerations go before an impartial board. But Swanson has instead decided to retire as chief, as confirmed by his attorney, Linda Fraas.
In her decision, McDonald-Cady focused on an email exchange between Swanson and his husband, Nicholas Seldon, that included footage of Trustee Jeffrey Kahn involved in a 2023 road rage incident.
Since it was discussed by Trustees as they considered demoting Swanson, Kahn should have recused himself, McDonald-Cady wrote in an eight-page decision.
“Kahn’s self-assessed lack of bias is not sufficient,” she stated.
Swanson spent over 20 years with the department and started as chief in 2023. He received a positive performance review after his first year, but Municipal Manager Eric Duffy placed him on administrative leave after a verbal altercation involving Swanson’s husband in a 2024 traffic incident, where Swanson was the passenger, court records indicate.
An investigation by Vermont State Police and the Vermont Criminal Justice Council cleared Swanson of wrongdoing, but Duffy hired an outside investigator to look into his conduct as chief.
The investigator, who interviewed department staff, alleged that Swanson worked inconsistent hours and was absent during the day, kept a messy office and sometimes reported for duty out of uniform. He also claimed that Swanson did not respond to investigatory matters in a timely or thorough way and was inconsistent or unresponsive in exercising discipline.
Swanson filed a multi-million-dollar discrimination lawsuit in April 2025 against Duffy, the Town of Woodstock, the Village of Woodstock, acting Chief Christopher O’Keeffe and Seton McIlroy, the former Village Board chair, over his demotion.
Duffy had proposed Swanson be demoted from chief to patrol officer, the lowest-ranking position. The Village Trustees held a 14-hour hearing on the matter in March 2024 and ultimately decided to uphold the decision in July, though they opted not to demonstrate the specific legal cause.
When Swanson appealed the decision in court, Judge H. Dickson Corbett ruled in his favor, noting that the Village Board was required to establish cause finding that Swanson became “negligent or derelict” in his official duties, “engaged in ‘conduct unbecoming an officer,’” or otherwise became “unable to perform the functions” of his job, the superior court judge wrote in an August 2025 decision.
As a result, the Trustees went back to the drawing board with a second hearing where they tried to establish cause for the demotion, in a 126-page decision.
Back in court on June 30, 2026, Fraas and Woodstock’s attorney, John Klesch, made their cases to Cady-McDonald.
Fraas noted that Swanson received no prior notification of failure to perform, or of policy violations prior to his demotion. She argued that the trustees acknowledged there was no “one particular act” that warranted dismissal, and that instead, Duffy based his decision on the totality of complaints.
Klesch argued that Swanson’s repeated lack of professionalism led to demotion, and the court needed to determine not if a reasonable person “would” make the same decision as the Trustees, but if they “could.”
On Sept. 22, nearly three months after the oral arguments, McDonald-Cady decided that Swanson had been robbed of due process in the second hearing, because Kahn, a Trustee, declined to recuse himself.
Part of the argument for demoting Swanson included the fact that, through his work email, he sent footage of a 2023 road rage incident involving Kahn and a member of the public to Seldon, who is a local attorney.
Despite Swanson’s request that Kahn recuse himself from the vote, he declined, McDonald-Cady noted in her decision.
The Trustees determined Swanson did not share the videos for a professional purpose, such as legal advice, but rather “because he was looking to share something with his husband that he found interesting,” the Trustees said.
As such, the decision to demote Swanson is officially reversed, said McDonald-Cady, who added in her order that further reconsiderations must be by an impartial board.
Swanson’s retirement makes that unnecessary, however. Duffy declined to comment on the retirement but said generally that when an employee resigns, their accrual time is paid out and their benefits end.
The appeal is now closed. Court records indicate the discrimination lawsuit is in mediation, with a status conference set for Oct. 5 at 3 p.m. in the Woodstock courthouse.
