Welcome to the Best of New Orleans! Scuttlebutt 07 27 04

Compare Hotel Rates for New Orleans and Save!
Date of Arrival

Nights

Rooms

Adults


Other Cities

SCUTTLEBUTT

07 27 04

Respond to
this Story

By Lili LeGardeur

The Board in the Court

Clare Jupiter says she was prepared for a hearing last Thursday on whether Orleans Parish School Board members Una Anderson and Jimmy Fahrenholtz have standing to sue the rest of the school board over a disputed clause in Superintendent Anthony Amato’s contract. She was prepared to argue the point of whether the federal court had jurisdiction in the case, and whether the contract clause stating that Amato could be unilaterally terminated by the board without notice was in accord with Louisiana state law.

But she and partner Trevor Bryan, who as principals of the law firm Bryan & Jupiter act as general counsel for the school board, were not prepared for an early morning filing by Jones Walker attorney Andrew G. Lee outlining nine points in his June lawsuit that the school board’s team had not answered. Citing a federal rule of civil procedure that says that points in a lawsuit that aren’t denied are acknowledged as true, Lee laid out a list of statements that could count heavily in any future legal actions to dismiss the superintendent.

The same points could count even more heavily in the court of public opinion — arguably the more powerful court, given the approach of elections on Sept. 18 — by supporting the idea that certain board members were sneaking around, plotting secret meetings and shutting out Fahrenholtz and Anderson as they planned to fire Amato in June. That was the scenario that led Anderson and Fahrenholtz to seek a temporary restraining order in federal court, setting the stage for the legal struggle that resumed before Judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr. on Thursday.

Among the statements that Lee said the board didn’t answer: that Amato’s contract was for a fixed term that runs through December 2006; that Amato told Board president Cheryl Mills on May 28 about his plans to travel to Puerto Rico on June 4; that “Board members Mills, Ford, Brooks-Simms, and Willard have never expressed any reason or cause to terminate Superintendent Amato’s employment or contract”; and that the “Board has no legitimate reason or cause to justify the termination of Superintendent Amato’s employment or contract.”

Jupiter said the move caught her unawares. “We didn’t file an answer because of our belief and our understanding that those were no longer being pressed,” she says.

Balderdash, says Lee. Jupiter and Bryan simply came to court unprepared, he says, and any agreement that he had with Jupiter’s legal team did not relieve them from responding to the lawsuit.

Thursday morning, Porteous granted a one-week continuance in the case that, in his opinion, will clearly go on to the Fifth Circuit. “I’m not going to let the record go to the appellate court with any dangling issues existing,” said Porteous. Lee’s offers to waive his motion, or to proceed with the hearing and allow Jupiter to answer his points at a later date, didn’t reassure the judge. “That’s a little lawyer trick,” said Porteous, who at various points reddened and raised clenched fists in evident frustration. “It’s me out on a limb by myself with everybody sawing.”

Even before Thursday’s court appearance, the tone of the filings made by the Jones Walker team representing Anderson and Fahrenholtz had shifted to an attack on what it described, in italics, as “a power-hungry, self-serving school board who, three months before their election, refuse to reveal their motivation for attempting to fire Superintendent Amato in the dead of night.”

It’s not about Amato, Jupiter maintains. Rather, she says, it’s about Louisiana law, which allows employees to be terminated at will for no particular reason — as long as that reason doesn’t violate discrimination laws.

Leaving the courtroom, school board member Una Anderson, who appeared without Fahrenholtz, lamented that the drawn-out proceedings were continuing to cost the public money. Fees for the school board’s lawyers are borne as a public expense, while Jones Walker is representing the plaintiffs in the case free of charge. The hearing will resume 10:30 a.m. Thursday, July 29.