Mansfield Selectmen Warily Approve Comcast Entertainment License, with a Few Concerns

The Mansfield Board of Selectmen approved the Comcast Center entertainment license on Wednesday 4-1 with new chair Olivier Kozlowski opposed.

The license came into some discussion concerning a liability issue. The issue stems from an incident and incurring lawsuit when a reserve officer was injured while on detail at the venue.

“We all know that we settled a case recently when an auxiliary police officer injured there and we ended up, because of the way the law was set up, having to pay for that disability,” Kozlowski said.

The problem in the suit was that the town and the police department were completely liable for his disability payments (despite being from another town) after a lengthy lawsuit that was resolved last year. The liability stemmed from a Massachusetts statute that required fire and police personnel to receive disability and allowed such personnel to sue the town, as what happened with the 2004 lawsuit.

“There is the possibility that we have to draw for out of town police officers, auxiliary police offiers, where if they get hurt [at the Comcast Center] we essentially have to put them on our payroll and pay their disability,” Kozlowski said. “By definition they’re hurt and they can’t work. That’s my concern; that fact pattern occurred recently.”

The board agreed they want to minimize the risk in the future with the current license and indemnification agreement.

 Kozlowski said that as of a conversation on Friday with general manager of the Comcast Center Bruce Montgomery, he believed the issue was resolved in the language of the license. This was not the case, and on Tuesday he and selectman Jess Aptowitz discussed the issue with Montgomery and several legal representatives.

The current language of the license states that, upon enactment of the license the town and Comcast Center organization will pursue an insurance policy to protect both the town and the organization as much as possible.

Town manager William Ross said that, since it is liability statute required by the state of Massachusetts, it would be a policy that only municipalities (and not private organizations or individuals) would use and therefore is a specialized market. He said it would take a time to find an insurance provider that would provide such a policy.

“Foxborough has a policy; the town buys the policy and bills the stadium for a significant portion of the cost,” Ross said.

To help pay for the insurance premium, the town will be raising the cost of a police detail for any concert to cover the insurance premiums. This means, in essence, the Comcast Center organization will be helping to pay the liability cost. The issue came up of how much that increase per detail should be.

“It heads in the right direction,” he said.

Montgomery said that he believes the town should retain some liability, mainly because it occurs in the town. He said that Foxborough does a similar deal with the stadium details that occur and pay three-quarters of the insurance premium by way of the police detail payments.

Selectmen George Dentino brought up the point that Mansfield may not have to issue a police detail by way of requiring the Comcast Center use private security exclusively. Montgomery said that such a force does not have police powers and cited an example in which a private security officer could only even issue a notice of trespass under a police officer’s supervision.

Montgomery said that in the 26 years of the venue’s operation, the 2004 incident has been the only such suit.

“I’ve had a thousand plumbers who’ve never had a leak until they get to my job,” Dentino said. “There is that vulnerability, and the town should protect itself from that vulnerability.”