Although the sorry tale of the Berlin Fire Company, Zack Tyndall and the Town of Berlin has long since vanished from the headlines, it now appears to be a case closed forever.
With a settlement reached in Tyndall’s harassment suit against the company and others, that aspect of this unfortunate situation has been concluded, but some unfinished business remains.
The fallout from the case also drew in the Town of Berlin, which at one point more or less severed financial ties with the company. To be sure, there were multiple reasons for the break and in some instances it came down to a contest of wills.
As is frequently the result of confrontations between two parties such as these, the public becomes caught in the middle. Right or wrong has nothing to do with it.
The relationship between the town and the company has thawed somewhat over time, but it has yet to fully recover, as the friction between the two remains.
With the end of the dispute between Tyndall and the company, however, now is the proper time to mend some fences elsewhere. If the plaintiff and the defendants in this legal action can agree on what it takes to resolve the matter, then the town and the company ought to be to able to do the same.
When settlements are reached in legal disputes, each participant must be able to accept a little less and give a little more than was originally intended. But they do so because the pursuit of an unattainable objective reaches a point where it no longer makes sense to continue.
That is where this lingering dispute has arrived – at the point where the endless friction isn’t doing anyone any good. Obviously, each side will have give ground and take steps that it would have preferred to avoid.
But it is not the good of the company or the good of town government that’s at stake, it’s the good of the town. Let’s settle this disagreement as well.