A sickly and obese Westchester judge filed suit Tuesday, saying court officials are discriminating against her due to her disabilities — which forced her to use a courtroom garbage can as a toilet.
White Plains City Court Judge Elizabeth Shollenberger — who’s currently suspended from the bench — says her co-workers have engaged in a campaign of harassment based on her myriad medical conditions, and subjected her to “extreme humiliation” that included sending workers in hazmat suits to clean up the mess.
She claims court employees made “a host of wildly inaccurate, crass and hateful allegations” when The Post reported how she’d scored the six-figure judgeship through political connections, even though she was too sickly to work.
Shollenberger, who’s yearly salary is $187,200, says her suspension, which began in August, and an earlier one that ran from May 2017 through July, were intended to “get rid” of her, with officials hoping she’d either quit or “simply get sick and die.”
Her Manhattan federal suit seeks reinstatement and “reasonable accommodations for her disabilities,” as well as unspecified money damages from the Unified Court System, Chief Judge Janet DiFiore and Chief Administrative Judge Lawrence Marks.
Court papers say Shollenberger’s ailments include hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and immune thrombocytopenia, a disorder in which blood doesn’t clot properly.
She also suffers from swelling in her legs and a related fungal infection in her lower left leg that are tied to a 1989 fall into the gap between a subway car and the Union Square station platform, and obesity that’s “partly a result of [her] other medical conditions and the accident.”
Shollenberger takes medications including antibiotics and antifungal drugs that “frequently cause stress to [her] gastrointestinal system, requiring her to have quick access to the restroom,” the suit says.
On May 1, 2017, she was alone in her courtroom when she “suddenly and urgently needed to use the restroom” but knew she couldn’t make it in time.
“In distress, she defecated in a plastic-lined wastepaper basket,” her court papers say. “She then removed and tied the plastic liner bag and double-bagged it for disposal, but a small stain about the size of a quarter was visible on the carpet.”
Shollenberger says the incident caused “a hysterical reaction,” with workers cordoning off the courtroom with yellow police tape through the following day, when three people went in to clean up wearing hazmat suits and breathing masks.
White Plains resident Mark Elliott, who has accused Mayor Tom Roach of appointing Shollenberger to a 10-year judicial term because she was the city’s Democratic Party chairwoman, said, “It is safe to say that no matter what the result is in this case, this was, to put it mildly, a disastrous judicial appointment.
“In addition to paying the judge more than $200,000 a year in salary and benefits, now the taxpayers have to foot the bill for this lawsuit,” he added.
Asked for comment on the suit, court system spokesman Lucian Chalfen said, “An administrative order was signed on July 13 returning her to White Plains City Court after numerous accommodations were made for her at the facility.”
“A month later, on Aug. 15, an administrative order was signed reassigning all matters and cases in front of her to the other judges. The reassignments were made for her personal, and the public’s, health and safety at the Court,” he added.