{"id":195677,"date":"2026-05-18T15:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T15:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/195677\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T15:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T15:58:08","slug":"delco-politician-slams-critic-with-lawsuit-over-facebook-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/195677\/","title":{"rendered":"Delco Politician Slams Critic With Lawsuit Over Facebook Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNews<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

It’s the 25-year-old councilmember versus a 66-year-old grandma.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Left:<\/p>\n

Left: Upper Darby elected official Noah Fields (photo via official Upper Darby government site) | Right: Delco resident Shellie Siegel Hoyt Zollo, the woman he is suing (photo courtesy Shellie Siegel Hoyt Zollo)<\/p>\n

Politicians have been filing lots of lawsuits these days. Just look to the White House, where Donald Trump has filed suits against The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the BBC in the last year alone. And now, an Upper Darby politician has filed a lawsuit of his own \u2014 but not against a media outlet with a boatload of money. No, he\u2019s suing a 66-year-old Delco grandmother.<\/p>\n

Noah Fields, the Upper Darby Township Council vice president, filed his lawsuit in Common Pleas Court against Delco resident Shellie Siegel Hoyt Zollo. It\u2019s currently winding its way through the legal system.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s been a loudly vocal critic of local government for many years, long before Fields took office. She attends as many Upper Darby Township Council meetings as she can, and lets her opinions be known. Zollo tells Philly Mag that she\u2019s called Upper Darby Mayor Ed Brown a \u201ccancer\u201d to his face on at least three occasions, and she was part of a plaintiff group that sued the township over how it planned to use an $800,000 grant that was supposed to be for a community arts and education center.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a bit of what Zollo had to say to Brown at a council meeting last year:<\/p>\n

The lawsuit filed by Fields centers on a Facebook post that Zollo made last year, just before the November general election, in which 25-year-old Fields, a Democrat, handily won one of two open at-large council seats. Zollo posted about a minor criminal incident that Fields was allegedly involved in at a Delco church a decade ago.<\/p>\n

She says she received an anonymous tip about the matter and then shared it on Facebook, where she routinely posts political opinions and propaganda; while her posts lean to the right, she has also lashed out at Republicans. \u201cI don\u2019t vote blue no matter who, and I don\u2019t vote red because you said,\u201d she says with a laugh.<\/p>\n

According to Zollo, she very quickly received a phone call from another Upper Darby politician, telling her that the information she posted came from a sealed juvenile record and that she should delete the post immediately. In an interview with Philly Mag, she said she did just that and claimed the post was only up for 22 minutes.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit alleges that Zollo illegally \u201cdisseminated a sealed juvenile matter\u2026 and falsely asserted that this incident reflects on his character as an adult and community member.\u201d The suit goes on to say that \u201cexpunged or sealed records are deemed nonexistent\u201d as far as the law is concerned and that Zollo inaccurately implied \u201cthat juvenile allegations \u2014 never adjudicated as offenses and legally nullified \u2014 reflect ongoing criminality or moral unfitness.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the suit, Fields \u201cwas never adjudicated delinquent and never convicted of any offense.\u201d In the complaint, attorney Bryan Lentz describes Zollo\u2019s conduct as \u201cextreme and outrageous, particularly because it involved the dissemination of sealed juvenile information that Pennsylvania law treats as confidential and not subject to public exploitation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Upper Darby Police Department also got involved, since the public shouldn\u2019t have access to a sealed juvenile record. Detectives asked to see Zollo\u2019s phone \u2014 she says the information came to her via text \u2014 and she turned it over. But the text was nowhere to be found. Zollo says she can\u2019t explain what happened to it. \u201cI don\u2019t understand phones,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Philly Mag, Zollo called Fields a \u201clittle pecker\u201d and \u201cfuckface\u201d and said she can\u2019t afford legal representation but that a friend of hers raised money for Zollo to hire a consultant so that she could file her own response to the lawsuit. She intends to represent herself. Lentz declined to comment on behalf of his client.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not disputing that I posted it,\u201d Zollo says. \u201cI was simply unaware that I shouldn\u2019t have posted it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The suit accuses Zollo of public disclosure of private facts, intrusion into the councilmember\u2019s private affairs, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and civil conspiracy, assuming Lentz can determine who any alleged co-conspirators might be during the discovery process.<\/p>\n

Zollo says she feels like she\u2019s been \u201cset up,\u201d and that the person who sent her the anonymous info did so so that it could result in this very type of action against her. But she says she doesn\u2019t know who would be behind this alleged conspiracy, and that it certainly couldn\u2019t have been Fields himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cNoah doesn\u2019t have two brain cells to smack together, let alone concoct a plan like this,\u201d she insists. \u201cBut I\u2019m not going to let these people shut me up. Fuck them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"News It’s the 25-year-old councilmember versus a 66-year-old grandma. Left: Upper Darby elected official Noah Fields (photo via…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[147,149,148,150],"class_list":["post-195677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upper-darby","tag-upper-darby","tag-upper-darby-headlines","tag-upper-darby-news","tag-upper-darby-township"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}