David Dixon has said it for years: He's sure some of the pictures that got him fired from Harlan County School District eight years ago are fakes.

His lawyer says he can now prove that's true.

Board attorney Johnnie Turner says the allegations are ridiculous.

Dixon, a former mining and carpentry teacher at Cumberland High School, was fired for taking provocative pictures of a student in his private studio.

The first time he saw the worst of the pictures showing a 17-year-old student topless was at his 1996 hearing, he said.

Dixon's attorney, Jeff Blum, filed a motion on Oct. 25 asking Circuit Court Judge Cletus Maricle to strike 12 pictures in the case as fraudulent, based on letters from the school board attorney to a photo studio, testimony from another photographer who developed the pictures and comparison of the suspected photos with original prints Dixon kept from the photo shoot.

"(C)areful examination of the key exhibits ... show these photographs to be fabrications created digitally by combining photos of Shasta Combs' face taken by Dixon with other stock photos of some unidentified woman's exposed breasts," states the motion.

At the same time, attorneys defending the Harlan County School District's decision to fire Dixon are appealing Maricle's recent order sending Dixon's case back for a new hearing. The judge ruled that the hearing officer the first time around made mistakes that warrant Dixon another shot.

Maricle's decision may wait until the appeal is decided, Blum said.

If the judge finds in favor of Dixon, Blum said it would uncover the "transparently ridiculous firing of a tenured teacher."

Turner said the motion is out of line.

"Mr. Blum's allegations border on being both defamation and against the rules of ethics," he said.

The motion to strike the pictures alleges that Susan Lawson, attorney for the school board at the time of Dixon's termination, paid a photo studio to digitally alter pictures of Shasta Combs, making them more revealing than they originally were.

Some of the pictures presented in the 1996 hearing which ended in Dixon's termination showed Combs without anything except her hair covering her torso.

There has been no response to Blum's motion filed as of Tuesday.

Dixon has maintained since the start that he didn't take any topless pictures of Combs, though he admits to taking pictures that showed her wearing only a fishnet covering on top, with her breasts covered.

"It was only recently we acquired the kinds of material we needed to prove he's right," said Blum.

Blum is basing his motion in part on a letter sent to Fleetwood Photo by Lawson, which thanks Frank Distefano for his "efforts in piecing together the negatives."

"Largely due to your efforts," states the letter, "we were able to settle this case successfully with Mr. Dixon agreeing to take an unpaid medical leave of absence and then once he reaches retirement age in approximately two years, to resign from the school system."

Dixon challenged his leave of absence, got a hearing by a tribunal and was terminated based on the evidence put forth in that hearing. Part of the evidence were the pictures he said he didn't take.

Lawson was in court Tuesday and could not be reached for comment.

The motion to strike the 12 pictures compares prints that Dixon kept of the original negatives with some of the provocative photos. It states that some photos are identical in the face and hair, but with a different torso.

The "exhibits were almost certainly generated by digital alteration and not taken by Mr. Dixon," states the motion.

Turner said the allegation is "totally false," and calls it a legal maneuver used to "make the (school) system look bad when we've got a system that's doing real well."

Dixon shot the photos of Combs and other students because they were unhappy with their senior pictures. Combs and one other student had additional pictures taken at that time.