SOUTH PLAINFIELD – A Superior Courtroom decide has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a former borough Board of Schooling member alleging the board didn’t observe state legislation and district coverage when it refused to pay her authorized charges for defending herself in an ethics grievance filed towards her by the superintendent of faculties and 7 members of the board.
Choose Michael Toto on Friday dismissed the go well with introduced by Deborah Boyle, a 15-year member of the college board who misplaced her bid for re-election in November.
In his dismissal of the lawsuit, Toto wrote that Boyle “can’t show irreparable hurt.”
“Irreparable hurt is hurt that can’t be redressed by financial damages,” Toto wrote.
The decide additionally defined that Boyle’s “alleged acts” have been personal actions, not actions undertaken in her function as a board member.
Due to that, Toto wrote, she can’t be indemnified for these actions below state legislation.
As well as, the decide wrote, Superior Courtroom doesn’t have jurisdiction to listen to the case which ought to proceed earlier than the state Workplace of Administrative Legislation.
The go well with arose after the ethics grievance was filed towards Boyle for allegedly giving confidential paperwork to Robert C. Diehl, who in 2021 filed go well with towards the college district, charging that he was not employed as principal at the highschool due to his age. That case is pending earlier than Choose Bruce Kaplan.
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The ethics grievance on the middle of the controversy alleges that Boyle delivered a bundle of paperwork to Diehl’s residence. These paperwork, based on the ethics grievance, reportedly contained confidential and privileged communications between Boyle and Marc Zitomer, the college board’s lawyer, and different paperwork involving Chapman and Joe Roselle, Zitomer’s associate.
The paperwork got here to gentle when Robert A. Diehl, appearing as lawyer for his father within the age discrimination litigation, notified John Regina, the college board’s insurance coverage counsel representing the district within the lawsuit, that his father had acquired the 20 pages of paperwork.
At a closed board assembly on June 28, Boyle denied giving the paperwork to Diehl which have been positioned on his doorstep.
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Within the closed board assembly, Boyle acknowledged the handwriting on the paperwork was hers, however she couldn’t clarify how the paperwork have been delivered to Diehl, the ethics grievance says.
Although her private e-mail handle was on the paperwork, Boyle stated she had printed the paperwork on her residence printer and given them to her lawyer in one other ethics matter, however that she didn’t know the way the paperwork acquired from her printer to Diehl’s residence, based on the ethics grievance.
The grievance concludes that Boyle’s “unsatisfactory and unimaginable responses” to questions within the board assembly results in the “solely believable rationalization” that Boyle, or somebody appearing on her behalf, delivered the paperwork to Diehl’s residence in an effort to “drawback” the district in Diehl’s lawsuit.
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Mike Deak is a reporter for mycentraljersey.com. To get limitless entry to his articles on Somerset and Hunterdon counties, please subscribe or activate your digital account.
