Lawyer petitions in Palmerton teacher suit

The destruction of a key piece of evidence has an attorney asking for a federal judge to enter a summary judgment in favor of three Palmerton Area School District employees.

The lawsuit was filed against them by dismissed kindergarten teacher, Lauren Smith, who was fired in early 2015 by an 8-0 board vote.

In her lawsuit, filed in U.S. Middle District Court in December 2015, Smith claimed she was fired over a book of drawings she had made.

The lawsuit names Superintendent Scot Engler and Towamensing Elementary teachers Shanna Matthews Koscinski and Lisa Ward as defendants.

“The defendants are entitled to summary judgment due to (Smith’s) failure to preserve and/or destruction of the book of drawings,” attorney Sharon M. O’Donnell wrote in her motion.

“The duty to preserve the evidence was reasonably foreseeable to (Smith) at the time it was destroyed. The evidence is clearly relevant. It may even be said that the book is this case.”

In her 2017 deposition, Smith said her mother took the book from school and her father later burned it.

Background

“The book was intended as a personal gift for an assistant teacher and contained drawings intended to be humorous about certain people the teachers knew and classroom situations they had experienced,” the complaint stated.

Another Towamensing staff member, according to the complaint, contended the book of drawings made fun of students and teachers in a demeaning, derogatory way.

Smith, in her complaint, stated many of the allegations about the book were untrue.

“The untrue allegations included that the cover page contained illustrations of alcohol, syringes and other drug paraphernalia, and sexual content and contained the phrase “Everything I Needed to Know in Life I Learned in Kindergarten,” the complaint states.

“It was also misrepresented that the book contained a caricature depicting a student looking like Fat Albert with a pudding container in the background allegedly making fun of the student’s weight and ethnicity.”

O’Donnell argued that (Smith) “must establish the falsity of the allegations relating to the contents of the book.

“The defendants have been deprived of the most vital and best evidence of the contents of the book and the drawings contained therein,” she wrote.

Smith’s attorney, Scott Fegley, withdrew from the case in 2017 after telling the court she “completed at least two applications for employment after her discharge from Palmerton in which she knowingly misrepresented that she had not been discharged from any prior employment.”