One lawyer got the memo, the other didn't - and the employer didn't have to fix it
A tenured Alabama school administrator lost her bid to overturn her firing after her own attorneys failed to coordinate on a hearing date.
The Alabama Court of Civil Appeals on June 5, 2026, reversed a hearing officer who had reinstated Dr. Barbarietta Turner-Pugh, the Monroe County school system's director of student services. The appellate court ruled the Monroe County Board of Education gave Pugh constitutionally sufficient notice of her termination hearing, and that the communication breakdown between her two attorneys was not the Board's problem to fix.
The case offers a clean lesson for HR teams handling discipline against represented employees. Notice to the attorney of record counts as notice to the employee, and an employer does not have to chase down disputes inside the other side's legal team.
In December 2024, Monroe County superintendent Gregory L. Shehan moved to terminate Pugh, citing unsatisfactory performance, incompetency, insubordination, and other good and just cause. Pugh requested a hearing under the Students First Act, Alabama's statute for disciplining tenured education employees, and told the Board her attorneys would appear and that all correspondence should go to her counsel.
Pugh was already suing the Board in federal court over employment-discrimination claims, represented there by attorney Christine Hernandez. For the termination matter, a different attorney,...
NeoGenomics Laboratories Inc. (NeoGenomics), located in Florida, has agreed to pay $9,813,260 to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by providing below fair market value cons...