PROVIDENCE — A federal jury yesterday declared that the City of Providence and two ex-employees violated state wiretapping laws by arranging for the en masse secret recording of telephone calls to and from the Public Safety Complex.

The jury, according to city officials, awarded compensatory and token punitive damages of approximately $525,000 to many of the 100-plus plaintiffs in the civil lawsuit. Senior Assistant City Solicitor Kevin F. McHugh estimated that if the verdict stands, the particular plaintiffs named in the award would collect $10,000 to $12,000 per person from the city.

A number of firefighters, their relatives and friends, civilian clerks in the Public Safety Department and a handful of police officers had sued the city; Urbano Prignano Jr., former police chief; Manuel Vieira, former director of communications, and Mary Lennon, former chief of operations for the Department of Communications.

They alleged that the defendants violated their state and federal constitutional rights as well as state wiretapping and privacy statutes by installing a telephone recording system called Total Recall and recording more than 750,000 calls from May 2002 through Feb. 10, 2003.

Only three of the calls were ever retrieved and listened to, however, according to evidence presented during the trial. And none of the plaintiffs was a party to those three calls. The jury nevertheless concluded that merely recording the calls broke the law and entitled certain plaintiffs to damages.

“…We feel very vindicated in the fact that a jury has indicated that our constitutional rights were violated,” plaintiffs co-counsel Carolyn Mannis said last night. “The city to this day has never taken responsibility for its actions in recording over 750,000 phone calls.” It was a “travesty,” she said, that the city never notified anyone that the calls were recorded — either with a beep or a prerecorded announcement — and that the city forced the plaintiffs to undertake prolonged litigation.

Citing the complexity of the case, including the variety of plaintiffs and their claims, Mannis said she is unable to immediately estimate the size of the award.

Midstream in the trial, U.S. District Magistrate Judge Lincoln D. Almond released Prignano as a defendant.

That occurred, according to McHugh, “because there was no evidence against him at the close of the plaintiffs’ case.”

But the jury awarded damages against the city, Vieira and Lennon, and in their official capacities, Mayor David N. Cicilline and Police Chief Dean M. Esserman. Although Cicilline and Esserman were named in their official capacities for legal reasons, they had nothing to do with Total Recall and do not shoulder any of the liability.

Vieira and Lennon were sued personally as well as in their former official capacities with the city, but will neither have to pay any part of the award nor the costs of their separate legal defenses. That is because, City Solicitor Joseph Fernandez acknowledged, the city indemnified them for their costs as well as their potential liability.

Fernandez said that in the ordinary course of business the city holds harmless its public safety employees. Prignano’s legal fees likewise will be paid by the city.

Taxpayers are on the hook for the award — if it stands.

Fernandez said the case remains pending litigation because Almond has reserved judgment on several motions by the defendants to dismiss the case. Mannis said it would be improbable for the judge to void a reasonable jury verdict.

“We anticipate that there will be an appeal” by the defendants, Mannis predicted. McHugh emphasized that there is virtually no case law in the State of Rhode Island or in the First U.S. Judicial Circuit pertaining to the recording of phone calls by a municipal public safety department, which he suggested would make the case ripe for appeal if Almond does not overturn the award.

“It is a very complicated case” with various statutory and constitutional claims stated in six counts, Mannis said.

Although the number of plaintiffs originally was higher, 135 remained at the time of trial, according to Mannis. The jury confined its award to the firefighters, the clerks and three police officers and it did not award damages to the firefighters’ family and friends, according to McHugh.

Although the jury found that the defendants violated the plaintiffs’ state and federal constitutional rights and a state privacy statute, certain plaintiffs were awarded only token damages of one or two dollars apiece on those claims, McHugh explained. The substantial monetary award came for the violation of two state wiretap statutes, he said.

The jury had the case for 11 hours over two days and returned the verdict at 4 p.m. yesterday.

gsmith@projo.com