By Joe Pinchot
MERCER — A Mercer woman’s nearly 10-year quest to press a disability discrimination suit against state police and the state of Pennsylvania is over because of a technicality.
State Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to hear Bonita Perry’s appeal of a May Superior Court decision that upheld the suit’s dismissal in Mercer County Common Pleas Court. Judge Christopher J. St. John had ruled the suit was improperly transferred to Mercer County.
“As far as my appeals go, I’m done,” Ms. Perry said Friday. “This is it.”
She never was able to get the merits of her case considered by a jury or a judge thanks to the technical glitch, and that leaves her with one last option: filing a malpractice suit against her attorney, Gregory G. Paul, Sewickley,
“I feel I’ve got one good fight left in me,” she said.
Although it can be difficult to find an attorney to file a legal malpractice suit — “Attorneys don’t want to sue other attorneys,” she said — Ms. Perry said she would like to do so.
She is out the $3,500 initial cost to get the suit filed. If she had won, Paul would have gotten 40 percent of the award or settlement, she said.
“I think the Pierce law firm at least owes me my money back,” she said.
Paul, who did not return a message, has left Pierce and currently works for Morgan and Paul.
Ms. Perry, 59, was hired as a police communications officer in 1980, and was diagnosed in the early ‘90s with fibromyalgia, a medical disorder characterized by pain, heightened and painful response to pressure, fatigue, trouble sleeping, joint stiffness and other symptoms.
Ms. Perry said a PCO’s irregular work schedules made her condition worse, and she asked to be put on a regular schedule. She resigned in June 1999, but called it a “constructive discharge” because of state police’s alleged failure to accommodate her needs.
She said she loved her job and working for the state police.
“They enforce the law,” she said. “However, some of the higher ups felt they were above those laws.”
Ms. Perry sued the state and state police in federal court on June 19, 2000, alleging disability discrimination under federal and state law.
The defendants denied the allegations, arguing that Ms. Perry did not exhaust her administrative remedies — such as filing new grievances or appealing — before filing suit, retired before her request for accommodation had been ruled on, and made contradictory statements about her ability to continue working.
In December 2000, Ms. Perry asked to have the federal claims dismissed and the case transferred to state court.
A federal judge transferred the case to Allegheny County Common Pleas Court, and it was then transferred to Mercer County Common Pleas Court on Dec. 19, 2002.
The parties went through all the pre-trial proceedings, including the taking of depositions, and Ms. Perry asked for judgment.
Mercer County Common Pleas Court Judge Francis J. Fornelli ruled that the complaint had not been filed in Mercer County, and St. John dismissed the suit Feb. 8, 2008.
Ms. Perry appealed St. John’s ruling, and sought to have the federal case reopened. The U.S. Court of Appeal for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia, ruled May 11 that she waited too long to try to reopen the case, and said her hopes lie in state court.
On May 28, Superior Court agreed with St. John that her case was not properly transferred.
St. John said it was up to Ms. Perry to have the case transferred from Allegheny County to Mercer County, and that a proper transfer involved filing a “certified transcript” of the federal court’s final judgment and pleadings.
“Instead, she filed a certified copy of the federal court’s docket entries,” a three-judge panel of Superior Court said in its ruling. The docket entries are a listing of all the documents filed in the case.
Ms. Perry said people have advised her over the years to drop the suit and move on.
“I told them, ‘Easy for you to say. This hasn’t been the last 10 years of your life.’”
She said her faith and her fighting nature kept her going.
