The Ansonia Board of Education has been ordered by a federal judge to pay $17,902 in legal fees and another $1,294 in court costs to a Bridgeport lawyer who successfully overturned the expulsion of a former high school football player arrested on a marijuana charge after school.
U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall awarded the payments to Gary Mastronardi, a former FBI agent turned lawyer, for his representation of Tristan Roberts, a 17-year-old Ansonia High School junior, and his mother, Paulette Bolling, last fall.
Michelle Laubin, a Milford lawyer representing the school system, challenged both the system's liability for legal fees and the $400 per hour Mastronardi requested for his work on the case.
The judge found that Mastronardi successfully obtained Roberts' return to school by convincing her to issue a temporary restraining order against the Board of Education's expulsion. That led to a Nov. 14 settlement in which the school board rescinded the Oct. 22 expulsion and allowed Roberts to return to school the next day.
Hall did reduce Mastronardi's hourly fee request to $350 for each of the roughly 51 hours he spent working on the case.
Roberts was suspended and then expelled from the high school after police arrested him in September on a marijuana possession charge in the Riverside Apartments housing project in Ansonia.
The incident occurred several hours after school closed for the day and several miles away from the high school. Police said they found eight small bags of marijuana and $13 in Roberts' possession during his arrest. The charges, however, were resolved under the youthful offender laws, with no incarceration and no criminal record.
Hall granted Mastronardi's request for a temporary restraining order against the expulsion.
At that time, Mastronardi said the judge advised schools that "they'd better make sure before expelling a student for engaging in after-hours, off-campus misconduct that the conduct disrupted the school's operation."
As part of the settlement, Bolling withdrew her federal lawsuit against the Board of Education, Supt. of Schools Carol Merlone and Ansonia High School Principal Susan H. McKernan.
Neither Laubin nor Mastronardi could be reached for comment Tuesday.
