380-million-year-old fossils dumped in landfill
Ammon News - A professor sued a New Jersey university claiming the school's negligence led 380-million-year-old fossils to end up in a landfill in Nashville, Tennessee, last year.
Martin Becker, a professor of environment science and a paleontologist at William Paterson University, had planned to collaborate with a colleague on a comprehensive monograph featuring his fossil collection, according to the civil suit filed last week in Superior Court in Passaic County.
Becker spent 'hundreds upon hundreds of hours' collecting the Devonian age marine invertebrate fossils from the High Mountain area of Wayne, New Jersey, the suit says.
Becker needed to send the priceless collection to his colleague in Florida to move forward with the project, the lawsuit says.
On June 18, Becker packaged about 200 fossils into 19 separate boxes, which was about 80% of his collection, the suit says. Each package weighed 20 to 60 pounds, it says. The fossils were taken to the university mailroom that day and given to mailroom supervisor Raymond Boone, who is also named as a defendant, according to the suit.
The delivery company picked up the packages on June 18, it says. Boone told Becker that he would receive tracking and insurance information, but Becker claims he never received it, according to the lawsuit.
In the following weeks, the suit says, Becker's colleague in Florida informed him that the fossils never arrived.
Becker said he received tracking information on Aug. 20 after he made two phone calls to the mailroom to speak with Boone, the lawsuit says. Tracking information indicated that the packages were in Parsippany, New Jersey, awaiting delivery, it says.
Becker would repeatedly contact Boone over the course of a month about the packages, the suit says, and Boone assured him on three separate occasions that he was 'working on the issue.'
On Sept. 20, Boone advised Becker that the fossil packages were possibly being held at the delivery company fraud department, according to the lawsuit. Becker contacted the delivery company directly on Sept. 30 and was informed that his packages were intercepted because William Paterson University failed to pay outstanding invoices; as a result, the university's account had been canceled, the suit says.
'Our client learned that the packages were dumped at an unidentified landfill somewhere in or around Nashville, Tennessee,' the suit says.
The university's account with the delivery company was canceled on April 24. The suit claims Boone had known that July 8 and alleges several other packages from other people had also been confiscated for the same reason.
Becker is seeking unspecified damages for the collection, as well as medical expenses for the emotional distress the ordeal has caused him, the suit says.
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