ALLENTOWN – A former Child Custody Master for the Northampton County Court of Common Pleas alleges that over a nine-year period, she was subjected to systemic age/gender discrimination and retaliation by other court personnel before being fired last October.
Lisa L. Tresslar filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on April 5 versus the Northampton County Court of Common Pleas and Northampton County, Pennsylvania. All parties are of Easton.
“Plaintiff is a 63-year-old female attorney with a distinguished record in the legal field. Plaintiff earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1984 and her law degree from Harvard Law School in 1987. Plaintiff served as a law clerk to the Honorable Amalya L. Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York from 1987 to 1988 and to the Honorable Michael J. Koury Jr. of defendant Court from 2012 to 2014. In her years of private law practice in New York and Pennsylvania from 1988 to 2012, plaintiff practiced in the field of commercial litigation, including securities, antitrust, white collar criminal defense, professional malpractice, corporate governance and complex class action litigation. On or about Oct.1, 2014, defendant Court hired plaintiff as the Court’s first full-time Child Custody Master and made her responsible for designing and implementing administrative procedures for the custody court,” the suit states.
“Plaintiff served in this role until Oct. 14, 2023, the date of her constructive termination. During plaintiff’s tenure as Custody Master, she streamlined the Court’s procedures for processing child custody petitions and resolving child custody disputes. Said changes reduced the number of custody petitions filed, increased the number of custody cases settled, and improved the overall efficiency of the custody court. Throughout plaintiff’s tenure as Custody Master, she received consistently positive performance reviews except from those agents, servants and employees of defendants who were motivated by discriminatory and retaliatory animus as detailed herein.”
The suit continues that, beginning in June 2018, Northampton County Court of Common Pleas Judges Jennifer R. Sletvold (approximate age 40s) and Paula A. Roscioli (approximate age 50s) plus Court Administrator J. Jermaine Greene Sr. (approximate age 50) “repeatedly made false statements to the other judges about plaintiff’s job performance, professionalism and integrity”, “repeatedly requested that plaintiff’s job responsibilities be limited in ways that would reduce her value to the Court” and Judge Sletvold “specifically requested that plaintiff be fired.”
The suit provides that these three individuals “did not direct such behavior toward similarly-situated younger male employees, [but rather] these three individuals’ attacks on plaintiff were demonstrably motivated by discriminatory animus based on plaintiff’s age and sex.”
“In March 2022, Judges Sletvold and Roscioli and Court Administrator Greene proposed adoption of new administrative procedures for the Court’s Custody Division that specifically targeted plaintiff. The proposed changes significantly diminished plaintiff’s role by restricting judges’ access to her and imposing overly burdensome restrictions on her ability to settle custody cases and assist judges in conducting their custody hearings and trials. Tresslar vociferously opposed these changes. In January 2023, after several months of review and discussion, the Family Law Committee of the Northampton County Bar Association unanimously voted to oppose adoption of the proposed changes. In May 2023, Northampton County Court of Common Pleas Judge Craig A. Dally became President Judge of defendant Court. In this capacity, Judge Dally became plaintiff’s supervisor and assumed final authority over the terms and conditions of plaintiff’s employment,” the suit says.
“On July 6, 2023, two months after Judge Dally was elevated to President Judge of the Court, he promulgated new custody procedures adopting the changes that had been proposed by Judges Sletvold and Roscioli and Court Administrator Greene. On July 14, 2023, one week after promulgation of the new custody procedures, plaintiff sent President Judge Dally an email reasserting her opposition to the new procedures and detailing the detrimental effect of the new procedures on plaintiff’s ability to perform her job. Plaintiff’s email stated: ‘The people who proposed these new procedures were, and are, demonstrably motivated by age and sex discrimination. They have certainly created a hostile work environment, not only for me but also for other women in the courthouse.’ President Judge Dally moved forward with implementation of the new, discriminatory custody procedures. He made no response to plaintiff’s complaint of unlawful age and sex discrimination in the workplace.”
Imminently thereafter, the defendants “undertook to obliterate plaintiff’s role and standing as Custody Master”, according to the suit, and President Judge Dally “immediately delegated his supervisory power over plaintiff and the Custody Office to Court Administrator Greene, who was not an attorney, thereby elevating Greene to the position of plaintiff’s supervisor.”
“With President Judge Dally’s knowledge and approval, as further discrimination and retaliation against plaintiff, Court Administrator Greene immediately subordinated plaintiff to part-time custody master Roseann Joseph, who had been hired only two months earlier in May 2023. With President Judge Dally’s knowledge and approval, as further discrimination and retaliation against plaintiff, Court Administrator Greene immediately diminished plaintiff’s role by systematically reorganizing her caseload, assigning her a greater percentage of the cases involving unrepresented parties and assigning part-time custody master Joseph a greater percentage of the cases involving attorneys. With President Judge Dally’s knowledge and approval, as further discrimination and retaliation against plaintiff, Court Administrator Greene directed the two administrative assistants in the Custody Office, Susan Stametz and Lauren Haas, to prioritize part-time custody master Joseph’s work over plaintiff’s work, allowing Joseph to monopolize the assistants’ time and forcing plaintiff to perform the majority of her own clerical work herself. These directives forced plaintiff to stop performing some of her most important administrative tasks altogether. Through these directives, Court Administrator Greene effectively demoted plaintiff from the role of an attorney to the role of a largely clerical employee,” the suit states.
“With President Judge Dally’s knowledge and approval, as further discrimination and retaliation against plaintiff, Court Administrator Greene restricted plaintiff’s case-management prerogatives. Specifically, Greene allowed the part-time custody master to take unlimited time to conduct her custody conferences and settle her cases. By contrast, Greene directed plaintiff to halt each of her custody conferences at the end of its allotted one-hour time slot, whether the case had settled or not, and if the case had not settled, abandon her efforts and list the matter for trial. Greene further directed plaintiff that if a judge contacted her for assistance during a custody conference, she was to refuse the judge's request and advise the judge that she was not permitted to deviate from her predetermined conference schedule. Through these directives, Court Administrator Greene slashed plaintiff’s discretion, erected significant obstacles to her fulfilling her job duties, tarnished her reputation among attorneys and judges, and ultimately constructively terminated her employment.”
After Stametz’s firing in September 2023 and though Northampton County Court of Common Pleas Judge John M. Morganelli, Administrative Judge of the Custody Division, initially decided to remove Greene’s authority over the Custody Office and restore plaintiff to the former scope of her role on Oct. 11, 2023, – he reversed course the following day, when Greene filed a complaint with the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts.
Later the same day, Morganelli sent President Judge Dally a written memorandum of resignation from his position as Administrative Judge of the Custody Division and two days later, on Oct. 14, 2023, the plaintiff was terminated.
For counts of sex discrimination and retaliation in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and age discrimination in retaliation in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the plaintiff is seeking rate of pay and other benefits and emoluments of employment to which she would have been entitled had she not been subjected to unlawful discrimination and retaliation, front pay, punitive damages, liquidated damages and compensatory damages for future pecuniary losses, pain, suffering, inconvenience, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life and other non-pecuniary losses, pre- and post-judgment interest, costs of suit, attorney and expert witness fees and such other relief as is deemed just and proper.
The plaintiff is represented by Sidney L. Gold, Brian Farrell, Margaret C. King and William Rieser of The Gold Law Firm in Philadelphia, plus Robert E. Goldman of The Law Office of Robert E. Goldman, in Allentown.
The defendants have not yet obtained legal counsel.
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania case 5:24-cv-01435
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com