Former Police Chief lawsuit vs. City proceeds

By Collin Gallant on March 1, 2025.

A lawsuit filed by the city’s former police chief is proceeding exactly one year after it was filed against against his former employer, the city, and several individuals, including three police officers and a local women with whom he had a “consensual sexual relationship.”

That consensual nature of the relationship is according to both parties, but intimate details of the encounters form the basis of what, Mike Worden claims, became a campaign to harm his professional reputation.

Worden, who resigned as MHPS chief in May 2022, is seeking a total of $1.85 million in damages.

That allegation has not been proven in court, and in fact, the file has not been updated at Court of King’s Bench since Worden’s statement of claim was submitted on March 1, 2024.

Earlier this week, however, the woman in the relationship filed a statement of defence saying that she acted honestly and asked that the suit be dismissed.

She “denies that her conduct or actions were wrongful and the cause of the wrongdoingâ€¦ Worden’s actions and conduct aloneâ€¦ contributed to Worden being humiliatedâ€¦ brought into ridiculeâ€¦ undermined Worden’s professional character, damaged his reputation in the Medicine Hat community and broader police community and caused Worden to resign from his employment as MHPS chief.,” according to court documents.

Plaintiffs typically face a one-year time limit to advance a lawsuit, and this week several other parties confirmed to the News they have now been formally served.

Those defendants include the City of Medicine Hat, Medicine Hat Police Service and former MHPS Inspector Brent Secondiak, who retired last spring.

City and MHPS officials cited internal policies to not comment on legal actions that are active. Secondiak declined comment, while the other individuals named in the suit are not reachable by traditional means.

Worden’s statement claims that he has been unable to obtain work in the policing field since stepping down and blames a broader “conspiracy” of “harassment” and “defamation” that had the goal of “intentional infliction of mental suffering.”

It also claims the city and police force breached employment agreement and was negligent in investigating after details of earlier claims against him and details of the relationship, that was apparently revealed by a former boyfriend of the woman who was an MHPS officer.

The women, who was known as anonymously as “Emily” in a Global News report shortly after Worden’s resignation, says in her court statement, that she provided some messages that she found “creepy and disturbing” to Const. Noel Darr.

She also alleges Worden asked her to delete messages and some communications between the two and later to provide false information to a potential employment standards investigation.

Worden denies in his statement of claim that he gave any such direction.

Such an investigation did proceed, ordered by the Medicine Hat Police Commission, and the woman says she was honest with investigators and after Worden’s resignation as an anonymous source in a report by Global News.

Worden also says the MHPS did not do enough to mitigate the damage caused by the media reports and states the named officers shared social media posts implicating him as a “bad cop.”

He seeks $250,000 in damages for reputational and personal injury, $560,000 for loss of past and future income related to his local contract, and a further $1 million for the loss of future income, as well as $40,000 for various other costs.

There is no immediate timetable for how the case, filed at Medicine Hat Court of King’s Bench, will proceed.