Lawsuit sent to federal court
A Brownsville woman refiled a lawsuit against the Brownsville Area School District, Intermediate Unit 1 and a school security officer in Fayette County Court, but the suit was transferred into federal court, where it already was dismissed. Shanna L. Spence, 20, claimed that one year spent at IU1 after being expelled from the district’s mainstream schools, ruined her school career and prompted her to drop out in 2004 before her junior year.
Spence refiled the suit in Fayette County Court earlier this year. She named the district, IU1 and “school police officer Lazer” as defendants.
Attorneys for the IU1 only successfully asked that the case be transferred to federal jurisdiction, where the suit has already been dismissed. It was transferred back to federal court in Pittsburgh on Friday.
Attorney Paul D. Krepps, representing IU1, indicated that he wanted the case assigned to U.S. District Judge Terrence McVerry because he already dismissed the suit when it was filed federally.
Krepps indicated he planned to file a motion to dismiss the current suit on behalf of IU1.
In November, McVerry dismissed Spence’s lawsuit against IU1, an unnamed school police officer and the school district.
McVerry found that Spence filed the suit more than two years after her 18th birthday. Civil rules indicate that claims must be filed two years after the alleged wrong. If the plaintiff was a minor when the alleged violation occurred, the person has two years from his or her 18th birthday to file.
Spence initiated the action one day after her 18th birthday, McVerry found, and dismissed the complaint with prejudice. That means it cannot be refiled against any of the defendants.
Although only IU1 filed a motion to dismiss the suit based on the statute of limitations, McVerry found that the defense applied to all of the defendants and dismissed the suit in its entirety.
The suit claimed that in 1999, when Spence was in junior high, that she “inadvertently carried along with her to school a pair of hairstyling shears or scissors.”
When school officials found that she brought the scissors to school, she was expelled and then had to attend IU1, known as “Fay-Con,” according to the suit.
The suit indicated that before that, Spence was an active member of her student body and received “reasonably good grades.”
Spence went to IU1 for an entire school year, according to the suit. During that time, Spence’s attorney Herbert Terrell claimed a school security officer, identified only as Officer Lazer in the suit, harassed her.