A Suffolk Superior Court judge denied a motion from Marie Theodat, embattled human resources director of the Boston Water and Sewer Commission, who sought to delay her mortgage dispute trial from next week to after the new year.

Theodat, who in this 2020 case is charged with stiffing a woman out of a $75,000 mortgage loan, filed an emergency motion on Nov. 7 to continue the relevant trial that was set to begin on Monday to a “convenient date” after Jan. 1, 2025, due to a change in attorney that she said would have put her at a “disadvantage” in court.

“Upon review and after hearing, the motion is allowed in part,” Superior Court Judge Rosemary Connolly ruled on Wednesday, per a posting on the trial court docket. “The court will delay the start of the trial by one day, until Nov. 19 … Otherwise, the motion is (denied).”

A final pre-trial conference was held on Wednesday, and was continued to Monday. A jury trial is slated to start the next day, per the docket.

Theodat, who is also embroiled in a civil lawsuit, filed in Superior Court in August, that accuses her of working with relatives to swindle her elderly and dementia-ridden uncle out of his $1.1 million Dorchester home, had argued in her motion that her new attorney’s lack of familiarity with the 2020 lawsuit would have hurt her chances in court.

Her new representation, Jeanette Lucey, is from the same law firm, Davids & Cohen, as her prior attorney. Theodat, per her motion, sought a change in counsel due to the departure of her prior attorney, Eric Loeffler, from the firm.

Lucey filed her first appearance on behalf of Theodat in the 2020 case on Oct. 10, according to court documents. The emergency motion homes in on outstanding discovery documents that weren’t produced, as requested by Lucey, last month.

“Without the responses to the properly served discovery she and her counsel will be at a disadvantage in defending against the claims in this action where she disputes plaintiff’s claim that she executed a promissory note and mortgage agreement in connection with a loan of $75,000 that plaintiff allegedly made to her,” Theodat’s motion states.

The motion goes on to argue that the “interests of justice, fairness and equity require that the plaintiff and codefendant,” Gertha Pierre and Ernst Guerrier, “respond to the properly and timely served discovery and abhor trial by ambush.”

Guerrier, the attorney who represented Pierre in the loan transaction and was facing malpractice allegations in the lawsuit, is no longer a defendant in the case. He will likely be a witness in the upcoming trial, and has filed a counter-claim against Theodat saying that she should pay “whatever he was on the hook for,” Michael Keohane, Pierre’s attorney in the lawsuit, previously told the Herald.

The Herald’s requests for comment from the attorneys for both sides of the case, Keohane and Lucey, were not returned on Wednesday.

A look at the court docket shows Theodat sought a delay in the trial proceedings last year as well, which was also denied.

Theodat filed a motion on March 21, 2023 that sought to “dismiss, or in the alternative” continue the trial “for lack of prosecution,” and what she alleged was the plaintiff’s failure to “effectuate timely service” upon her. Pierre did “nothing to advance her claims against” Theodat for “nearly three years after the case was filed,” the motion states.

The two outstanding civil lawsuits against Theodat, both of which were reported for the first time by the Herald, led a trio of unions representing Boston Water and Sewer Commission employees to press the agency last month to investigate and suspend Theodat, the human resources director, while the cases are active.

The unions, SEIU Local 888, IAM Local 100 and OPEIU Local 6, sent a letter to the commission’s executive director, Henry Vitale, after receiving “multiple comments and complaints from members related to charges” filed in the two suits.

In the letter, the unions had expressed concerns with Theodat’s continued access to employees’ sensitive information, such as banking numbers, routing information and social security numbers, and had “strongly” suggested that such information be transferred to the agency’s legal department for safekeeping.

“They took our recommendations, but they’re not acting accordingly,” Thomas McKeever, president of SEIU Local 888, told the Herald Wednesday. “All my members knew that we were having a sit-down with Boston Water and Sewer leadership and I think that they all independently know that it appears that Boston Water and Sewer is not taking any measures as it relates to our recommendations.”

A spokesperson for the Boston Water and Sewer Commission previously told the Herald that the agency had been in “extensive contact with union representatives” while declining to comment further.

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The spokesperson declined to comment again on Thursday, and refused to provide the statement the commission had released to the Boston Globe when it reported on the unions’ letter two weeks after the Herald.

In a statement, per the Globe report, the Commission said that Theodat “has been a valued employee for several years and is responsible for modernizing our human resources system.”

“While we always take our employee feedback seriously, these are unsupported allegations in a private legal matter that will be addressed through the proper forum,” the Commission’s statement reportedly read.

Along with the case set to go to trial next week, Theodat is embroiled in a more recent  lawsuit where she is alleged to have “fraudulently induced” her 88-year-old uncle and the plaintiff Rodolphe St. Cloud, to sign over the deed to his $1.1 million Dorchester home for “less than $100” under the “guise” that he was signing documents related to his medical care.

St. Cloud doesn’t read or speak English and has advanced dementia, per the lawsuit. Theodat, in a prior call with the Herald, called the complaint “fraudulent.”

Theodat’s annual salary at BWSC, per a spokesperson, is roughly $189,958.