Rhode Island
Sued for Speaking Up: Burrillville Took a Turf-Field Critic to Court and Lost Under RI’s Anti-SLAPP Law—Now Residents Ask Who Pays
What happened
In 2024, Burrillville resident Roberta Lacey opposed the town’s plan to put an artificial turf field at Burrillville High School’s Gledhill Field. She worried that PFAS, the so-called “forever chemicals,” could leach into groundwater in the town’s aquifer overlay zone. She went to town officials and state agencies, gathered a petition, and in September 2024 went to court asking a judge to make the town follow its own land-use rules. She won a restraining order that halted construction. In April 2025, according to her attorneys, the Superior Court found she had “more than established a prima facie case” that the project needed Planning Board review, a step the town had skipped.
The town didn’t just defend itself. In late 2024 it filed a counterclaim against Lacey personally, accusing her of tortious interference with the turf contract and civil conspiracy, and seeking to make her pay for the delays and added costs her opposition caused. The town also tried to drag in the Burrillville Land Trust, a private nonprofit, as a third-party defendant.
On Aug. 26, 2026, Superior Court Justice Shannon Signore threw out the counterclaim under Rhode Island’s anti-SLAPP law, which protects people who petition their government on public issues. (SLAPP stands for “strategic lawsuit against public participation.”) According to Lacey’s attorneys at Desautel Browning Law, the court granted summary judgment, awarded Lacey her attorneys’ fees and costs, and left compensatory and punitive damages for later proceedings (Lacey v. Town of Burrillville, PC-2024-04858, consolidated with PC-2024-05161). Town Manager Michael Wood did not respond to The Valley Breeze’s request for comment. The turf field itself was eventually approved after a second Planning Board hearing and finished earlier this year. Officials have said the litigation cost the town about $300,000.
Last Wednesday, the bill came up at the Town Council. According to Uprise RI’s recap of the meeting recording, a Pascoag resident used public comment to say Lacey’s claims for fees and for compensatory and punitive damages had been filed the Friday before. She said Council Vice President Stephen Rawson had confirmed at a library Q&A that the town’s insurance fund won’t cover them. She asked whether the council knew that before voting to sue, pointed to Council President Donald Fox’s public talk of an appeal (“Who is going to pay for that?”), and asked what the town will do so residents’ speech is never again targeted with taxpayer-funded lawsuits. The council doesn’t respond to public comment on items that aren’t on the agenda, and it didn’t.
Later the same night, the council created a new, empty litigation fund (No. 0205), which Wood said was meant for a possible move to join Portsmouth’s lawsuit against the state over local zoning power. When a resident asked whether the town keeps a fund for suing residents, an official said the question wasn’t relevant to the agenda item. The fund passed on a voice vote.
Update (Oct 20): Turf Critic Asks Court to Make Burrillville Pay $555,000
The bill has a number. According to ecoRI News, Roberta Lacey filed a motion on Oct. 9 asking Superior Court to order the town to pay her more than $555,000:
- $101,210 in attorney’s fees for 404.3 hours of attorney and staff time at Desautel Browning Law, billed from November 2024 to September 2026, plus $257 in costs. An affidavit from Newport’s presiding municipal court judge, J. Russell Jackson, calls the fees “fair and reasonable.”
- $154,002 in compensatory damages: $23,600 for 59 lost workdays, $3,402 for cameras, lighting and related electrical work at her property, and $125,000 for emotional distress, reputational harm, strain on her family and what the filing calls the chilling of her right to petition.
- $300,000 in punitive damages, which the filing says is meant to deter “municipal use of counterclaims, conspiracy allegations, public accusations, and chilled fundraising to make protected petitioning financially dangerous.”
- Paid notices of the ruling in the Burrillville Bugle and the Bargain Buyer, at the same size and placement as the town’s earlier turf ads.
A hearing is scheduled for Dec. 7. ecoRI reports the town had not filed a response, and Town Council President Donald Fox did not respond to a request for comment.
What the filing says town officials said. Lacey’s filing collects public statements by Fox and Town Manager Michael Wood. Her lawyers argue the statements show the counterclaim was meant to punish her. All of the following come from her filing as cited by ecoRI:
- An abutter’s affidavit says Wood told project opponents at a Nov. 5, 2025 council meeting: “I will do my level best to make sure that the opponents of this project are held accountable for every penny.” The abutter withdrew from a land-use appeal four days later, writing that his decision was based “on my fear of retaliation by the Town.”
- After the Aug. 26 ruling, Fox commented on Facebook: “This decision is not the final decision. Appeal to the RI Supreme Court is possible.”
- A member of the No Artificial Turf group wrote that at a May 27 council meeting, Fox pulled her from a slate of Conservation Commission reappointments, saying: “I have 400,000 reasons why not to reappoint Samantha Young.”
- Fox’s figure for what the fight has cost the town has kept rising: about $200,000 in January 2025, more than $365,000 in legal fees in February 2026 (per The Valley Breeze), and now more than $400,000.
Original reporting
Read the underlying sources:
R.I. Gen. Laws § 9-33-2 — Anti-SLAPP: conditional immunity, fees and damages
Virtue Forge commentary
You don’t have to agree with Roberta Lacey about turf to see the problem here. A resident did exactly what civics class tells people to do. She called her officials, wrote to state regulators, gathered signatures, and when she thought the town was skipping its own rules, she asked a judge. A court agreed the town had skipped Planning Board review. The town’s answer was to sue her personally for the cost of being made to follow the law.
That is government using the public’s own money and lawyers against one of its citizens. A private developer who sued a neighbor for objecting at a zoning hearing would be called a bully. A town doing it is worse, because the town has the taxing power, a solicitor on retainer, and nothing personal at risk. Lacey had her savings at risk. The General Assembly wrote the anti-SLAPP law for exactly this situation, and it put the cost on the side that files the SLAPP. In Burrillville, that side is the taxpayers, the same people whose right to object the counterclaim threatened.
The questions the Pascoag resident asked are the right ones. Did the council know the insurance pool wouldn’t cover this before it voted to sue? Who weighed the risk? And will the town really spend more on an appeal to defend a claim the court found was aimed at protected petitioning? Leaders who answer “not on the agenda” should expect voters to put it on theirs. It’s also worth noticing the irony. The same council is building a legal fund to fight the state for local control, while it used the courts to punish a local resident for exercising hers.
What to watch: the dollar amount of the fee award; whether the court finds the counterclaim frivolous or harassing and awards compensatory or punitive damages; whether the council votes to appeal and how it pays for it; what the town’s insurer actually says in writing; and whether any council member or candidate commits to a policy against suing residents for speaking up.