Attorney appeals new civil trial for Albert Gallatin Area School District
The attorney for a woman who won a $100,000 jury verdict against the Albert Gallatin Area School District wants an appeals court to reverse a decision by a Fayette County judge granting a new trial in the matter.
Attorney Thomas W. Shaffer said Thursday that he does not believe that Judge John F. Wagner Jr. committed reversible error by allowing testimony of the alleged sexual harassment of a student by a teacher in the district who was not a party in the lawsuit.
Wagner, in September, ruled he should not have allowed the testimony, and granted the district a new trial in the case brought by a woman who said the district failed to protect her from her former teacher Donald Rosie, with whom she became sexually involved as a student.
The woman sued Rosie and the district after Rosie, 62, of Uniontown was arrested and charged with corruption of minors for having sex with her between March and June 2006. The woman was 16 at the time. Rosie pleaded no contest to the charge in 2007, and was sentenced to 23 months of intermediate punishment. Jurors who heard the civil trial awarded the woman a $200,000 judgment against Rosie, and he did not file any post-sentence motions challenging the verdict.
Shaffer argued during the February trial that the district fielded complaints about Rosie touching students’ hair and faces in middle school. He also contended that Rosie made lewd comments to players on the softball team he helped coach in 2005. Shaffer contended that those complaints put the district on notice that Rosie needed disciplined, and that could have curtailed what happened to the plaintiff in 2006.
For more information, read Friday’s HeraldStandard.com.