Centre County District Attorney Stacy Parks Miller has appealed a federal judge’s decision to dismiss her lawsuit against Centre County and others.
Parks Miller’s attorney Lance Rogers filed the notice of appeal in U.S. Middle District Court, where Judge Matthew Brann had dismissed the case. The decision is being appealed to the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
‘We were expecting the appeal,’ said Mary Lou Maierhofer, the attorney representing Centre County.
Rogers is the partner of Bruce Castor, who has been representing Parks Miller. Castor was recently and briefly interim Pennsylvania Attorney General following the resignation of Kathleen Kane, who appointed him as Solicitor General earlier this year before moving him the first deputy attorney general before her criminal conviction. He was also named a special assistant DA by Parks Miller in 2015.
Castor recently asked the county to pay him $126,000 for his representation of Parks Miller, though not for his work as special assistant DA.
Parks Miller’s suit had charged defamation, conspiracy, malicious prosecution, legal malpractice and other claims in a 13-count complaint against a dozen defendants, including the county, her former paralegal Michelle Shutt, current and former Centre County commissioners, Judge Pamela Ruest, former county administrator Tim Boyde, former county solicitor Louis Glantz and four defense attorneys.
Parks Miller had been accused of forging Ruest’s name on a fake bail order for an informant as part of an investigation of an alleged murder plot by a Centre County Correctional Facility inmate in 2013.
Based on information from paralegal Shutt, attorney Philip Masorti filed a complaint alleging Parks Miller had forged Ruest’s signature. Ruest said she couldn’t recall if she had signed the order. A state grand jury concluded that Ruest had signed the order and cleared Parks Miller of criminal wrongdoing.
But Parks Miller has argued that county officials improperly directed Bellefonte police to resume an investigation after the case had already been turned over to the Office of the Attorney General. She has also argued that a search warrant executed on her office was illegal and done with the purpose of humiliating her. She claims there was a history of animosity from county officials and defense attorneys toward her.
Brann dismissed most of the claims in May, writing ‘Parks Miller’s amended complaint consists of 311 rambling paragraphs, so inartfully pled that the reader can barely discern who said what about Parks Miller in order to substantiate her claims.”
In August, Brann dismissed the remaining claim of illegal search and seizure against the county and county officials.
Parks Miller is being sued by Shutt for retaliation, defamation, false statements, abuse of process and invasion of privacy in U.S. Middle District Court. In filing the suit in July, Shutt’s attorney Kathleen Yurchak said Parks Miller’s own lawsuit against Shutt for exercising her constitutional rights. She also said that Parks Miller’s public comments calling Shutt ‘a liar’ and ‘a felon’ were defamatory and meant to intimidate Shutt.
Parks Miller had claimed Shutt stole emails, which Brann dismissed because the emails in question had been widely disseminated by Parks Miller.
