Teacher suit wins ruling

PROVO — The Provo School District and the city's Board of Education must continue to be a part of the legal fight with 2 dozen teachers who filed a lawsuit over the district's post-retirement benefit package, a 4th District Court judge has decided.

On Friday, Judge Fred Howard set aside a June 1 motion that resulted in the school district and school board's dismissal from the suit, which also names the Provo Education Association, Bonneville Uniserv and the Utah Education Association as defendants.

Howard reversed the dismissal, he said, after studying legal texts about whether paperwork submitted late by the teachers' attorney could be accepted if there were an honest mistake caused the tardiness.

The attorney for the teachers, Evan Schmutz, told the judge on Friday he erroneously believed his staff sought a two-day extension on a May 30 deadline in which he was going to argue that the district and school board should not be dismissed from the suit.

Schmutz said he was busy on other cases and also took on additional work for a colleague with a medical emergency. That's why he needed additional time to work on the teachers' suit, he said.

But the staff never sought the time extension. Schmutz submitted the documents for the teachers' case on June 1 — after the deadline.

As a result, the district and school board were dismissed from the case.

Tom Seiler, an attorney for the district and school board, called Friday's decision a victory for the teachers — but expensive for the taxpayers.

He plans to continue seeking the district's and board's dismissals from the suit and says state law supports his argument that teacher contracts extend for at most five years.

According to the original suit, Provo teachers had received Medigap since the 1980s. The benefit sunset in January 2005, after the Governmental Accounting Standards Board established new guidelines for funding the benefit, a Medicare supplemental insurance. The district said at the time it could not afford to fund it.

The teachers filed suit in August 2005, saying their union leaders did not properly represent them and district chiefs did not provide for them as promised.

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E-mail: lhancock@desnews.com