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, Leston Stallworth, Jr., wrote to the Board on January 6, 2025, saying he represented Pugh and instructing that all correspondence on the termination be directed to him. Hernandez never filed a formal notice of appearance in the termination case.
The Board originally set the hearing for February 6, 2025. After Stallworth raised a conflict, the Board moved it to February 7. The superintendent confirmed the new date in writing to Stallworth on January 15. Stallworth never withdrew. Hernandez later told the Board's lawyer of a scheduling conflict and asked to reschedule, but the Board declined to move the hearing further, pointing to the statutory window and Stallworth's earlier agreement.
Neither Pugh nor any attorney appeared on February 7. The Board went ahead, heard the superintendent's evidence, and voted to terminate.
Pugh appealed. A Students First Act hearing officer reversed the termination, finding the Board's decision arbitrary and capricious and concluding that Pugh had been denied due process. The hearing officer credited the account that Hernandez had requested a reschedule and that Pugh had shown up on February 6 only to find no hearing.
The Court of Civil Appeals disagreed. Writing for the court, Judge Fridy said the hearing officer had used the wrong standard. The arbitrary-and-capricious test under the Students First Act applies to the employer's underlying personnel decision, not to procedural questions about scheduling. More to the point, the court found the Board had satisfied due process by giving notice to Stallworth, the only attorney who had formally appeared and the one who had directed that all correspondence be routed to him.
The court relied on Alabama Supreme Court precedent holding that notice of a hearing given to an attorney is notice to the client. Stallworth never filed a notice of withdrawal. The Board, the court said, could reasonably treat him as Pugh's attorney of record. Hernandez's later assertion of a scheduling conflict did not change the analysis, because she had not formally appeared in the termination matter.
The court also rejected the view that the Board should have done more to confirm Pugh actually knew about the new date. Due process, it said, requires notice reasonably calculated to inform, not guaranteed receipt. Pugh had notice through Stallworth, an opportunity to appear, and the right to present evidence. Her failure to attend did not, in the court's view, undermine the adequacy of the notice she received.
The decision draws a sharp line on what employers owe when an employee is represented by more than one attorney. The court said due process does not require an employer to untangle communication failures between an employee's lawyers or to police private attorney-client disputes before going ahead with a statutorily required hearing.
For HR professionals managing terminations of represented employees, that is the takeaway. When an attorney files a notice of representation and instructs that all communications run through them, dealing with that attorney discharges the employer's notice obligation, even when a second lawyer is active on a related matter.
The court reversed the hearing officer and sent the case back with instructions to affirm the Board's termination decision.
