Flagler Beach has filed a motion to dismiss a whistleblower lawsuit filed by former Facilities Director Bryan Moisao, who worked for the city between the end of March and the end of September 2025. The city cites five reasons to argue for dismissal, among them procedural flaws in the complaint itself.
Moisao alleged that the city terminated or fired him in retaliation for bringing to light internal problems he said were not being addressed. The city in its motion, which doubles as an answer to the lawsuit, describes the claims as routine personnel frictions and disputes that don’t rise to the level of concerns protected by the state’s Whistleblower Act.
Flagler Beach is represented by Susan Gainey of Orlando’s Roper, Townsend & Sutphen law firm. Moisao is represented by Mount Dora attorney Anthony Sabatini, who last July represented Palm Coast Mayor Mike Norris in a losing bid to unseat City Council member Charles Gambaro. Sabatini is also representing former County Commissioner Joe Mullins in a libel suit against this publication.
Moisao reported to City Engineer Bill Freeman, who is still with the city. Between May and June Moisao reported what he perceived to be the misconduct of an employee under his supervision to Freeman, an employee he later disciplined. As problems persisted, Freeman removed supervision of the lift station division from Moisao’s responsibilities, which Moisao took as a way to silence his concerns. Moisao in August wrote City Manager Dale Martin, then copied the six members of the City Commission, drawing a rebuke from Martin, who criticized the bypassing of the chain of command.
The day Moisao received a stellar evaluation, he was informed that he would not be hired past his probationary period. Martin interpreted that as not so much a firing as a non-hiring, though it amounted to the same thing. Moisao claimed that his evaluation was tampered with, that two versions had been filed.
The city’s motion restates the facts, which are mostly not in dispute (“the City accepts as true the Complaint’s well-pled facts, but not its conclusory assertions, in particular legal conclusions,” the city’s motion states.) Gainey then lays out her case against the technical flaws in the complaint Sabatini prepared, starting with a “failure to attach documents material to the pleadings.” There is a mandatory litigation rule that documents supportive of a claim in a complaint must be attached to the pleadings, or the complaint. They were not.
“The rule is mandatory, and a complaint that relies upon documents without attaching them is subject to dismissal,” Gainey writes in her motion. “Florida courts have consistently required strict compliance with this rule.” For example, Moisao contended that there were written communications that were protected under the Whistleblower Act, and that he said were central to his claim, yet those communications were not included in the pleading.
In an echo of the conclusions of the city’s Personnel Board, to which Moisao previously took his complaint, Gainey argued that for a whistleblower action, the issues in contention must by law rise to the level of “gross mismanagement, malfeasance, misfeasance, gross waste of public funds… or gross neglect of duty committed by an employee or agent of an agency.”
“There is nothing in [Moisao]’s Complaint,” the city’s motion states, “that might be construed as revealing violations of any laws, rules, or regulations, or acts or suspected acts of gross mismanagement, malfeasance, misfeasance, gross waste of public funds, or gross neglect of duty. [Moisao]’s allegations concern internal personnel matters, employee discipline, and disagreements over supervisory decisions. [Moisao]’s allegations do not describe gross mismanagement, malfeasance, misfeasance, or gross waste of funds.”
Notably, the wording Gainey used could be applied–and was applied, if not in so many legal words–to a list of grievances then-Commissioner Rick Belhumeur, aided by his son Benjamin Belhumeur, brought to the attention of the commission regarding Martin’s management on the eve of last March’s election. The list left Belhumeur’s colleagues perplexed, as Gainey seems to be, by the scattershot nature of the grievances and either their lack of supporting documentation or their references to what amounts to common workplace conflicts and personality clashes.
Belhumeur was defeated at the March election. One of the commissioners, John Cunningham, seized on the Moisao matter as had Belhumeur, and has continued to assail Martin’s tenure. Cunningham is not keen on renewing Martin’s contract. His case against Martin has–like Belhumeur’s, like Moisao’s–lacked the kind of substance that would give his colleagues something to take action on.
In essence, the Moisao-Belhumeur-Cunningham complaints have had something of an echo chamber quality, which Gainey’s motion to dismiss unwittingly addresses beyond the matter before Circuit Judge Sandra Upchurch, who is handling the civil case. Gainey’s argument, that the Moisao complaint has no viable cause of action, restates what commissioners have said of Cunningham’s and Belhumeur’s grievances were claimed.
Gainey further argues that the Moisao suit should be dismissed because he never signed a document supporting his allegations, as required by law if he was filing a Whistleblower action: “Nowhere does Plaintiff allege that any of these writings were signed, as mandated by the PWA. This omission is fatal,” Gainey writes. “The statute requires a “written and signed complaint,” and courts must give effect to that requirement.”
What disclosure Moisao did make, the motion to dismiss notes in a revealing footnote, were “routine personnel and operational issues to the very supervisor responsible for overseeing his work, not [] a whistleblower disclosure to an official with independent authority to investigate violations of law.” The same reasoning is applied to Moisao’s communications with Martin or even the City Commission. The fact that Moisao copied the commissioners on his complaint to Martin “does not convert the communication into a protected disclosure. The Complaint does not allege that he went outside the organization, contacted an external enforcement body, or revealed any new statutory violation. He simply broadened the internal audience for the same personnel-related complaints, which the City Manager then criticized as ‘very unprofessional.’” Moisao also appeared in person before the commission, at commission meetings, to explain his case.
“Expanding the distribution list of an internal grievance does not transform routine job-related communications into whistleblower disclosures under the Act,” Gainey writes archly. “In short, the Complaint alleges only internal, job-related communications about personnel and operational issues that were already known to management.”
The motion to dismiss characterizes Moisao’s firing as legitimate and non-retaliatory, starting with Moisao’s own admission that he violated the chain of command. “He admits the conduct that the City identified as insubordination,” the motion states.
That leaves the complaint with nothing to push to trial, in Gainey’s view.
A judge grants a motion to dismiss when procedural requirements have not been followed or when the facts, which in this case are not in dispute, don’t rise to the level of an actionable matter that would require a jury’s determination to arbitrate. Whether Upchurch, the judge, sees Gainey’s motion as meeting those criteria may become clearer at a July 8 hearing.
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