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Post by crusader12 on Jul 8, 2021 14:45:48 GMT -5
WORCESTER – A former professor at Holy Cross accused of sexual misconduct by students has filed a lawsuit against the college, accusing leadership of pushing through his firing to satisfy angry campus members.
Christopher Dustin, whom Holy Cross terminated around a year ago, argues in his complaint the college found him not responsible for the allegations made against him, and that he was only let go for denying the accusations during the investigation.
“The college nonetheless proceeded in an orchestrated march to a predetermined outcome – Professor Dustin’s termination – doing so in order to quell the clamor,” his lawsuit states, referring to public criticism from students and faculty aimed at the administration’s handling of alleged sexual offenses on campus.
The suit, which was filed in Worcester Superior Court on June 3 and moved to U.S. District Court this week, according to online court records, names the college, its Board of Trustees, and former president Rev. Philip Boroughs as defendants.
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Dustin, a philosophy professor who was at the college since 1991, was accused publicly by two former students of behaving inappropriately towards them, the first having notified the college as far back as 1997. More than two decades later, another student came forward with accusations Dustin made “romantic advances and explicit sexually-charged comments" to her beginning in 2016.
The college’s handling of Dustin’s and other reported instances of sexual misconduct at Holy Cross drew backlash on campus, culminating in a student-organized sit-in outside Boroughs’ office in early 2019.
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Before firing him, the college also rescinded its 2017 promotion of Dustin to dean of faculty amid the accusations against him.
But in his lawsuit, Dustin said the administration’s actual investigation of him was based on charges brought forward in 2019 by two former male students concerned about his alleged conduct towards female students, none of whom had “either complained to the college or would agree to participate in the investigation.”
His complaint further alleges the college ultimately found him not guilty of sexual harassment, which would have been the only grounds for him to lose his job under the rules of his contract.
The suit says Holy Cross consequently had no contractual right to terminate him, and also violated provisions of the federal Title IX law in removing him.
He is asking the court, if it finds in his favor, to rescind his firing, restore his “honors and rewards” earned at Holy Cross, and expunge all related disciplinary records against him. He is also seeking monetary damages, the amount of which will be determined at trial.
On Thursday, John Hill, a spokesman for Holy Cross, said the college would not have any comment on the lawsuit because it is active litigation.
But he added “Holy Cross takes all complaints seriously, and when appropriate we conduct a thorough and impartial investigation, in accordance with our policies and applicable law.”
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Post by mm67 on Jul 8, 2021 15:01:21 GMT -5
Smart move. Out of Court settlement. Dustin wins the lottery!
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Post by newfieguy74 on Jul 8, 2021 15:25:10 GMT -5
Smart move. Out of Court settlement. Dustin wins the lottery! Not necessarily. I can't say I know the facts, but if HC feels strongly about their actions they might well choose to go to the mat. I quickly looked up Dustin's lawyer, and his website says he does Estate Planning and Probate Law. Nothing about litigation or employment law. One possible inference is that he had trouble finding someone to represent him. |
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Post by KY Crusader 75 on Jul 8, 2021 15:30:39 GMT -5
If he is guilty (not in the legal sense but in the real sense) he should slink away in shame, be happy that he was not prosecuted for some crime, and drop the suit. If he's not guilty he should defend his good name.
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Post by longsuffering on Jul 8, 2021 15:37:55 GMT -5
HC paid BG through the end of his contract and he still sued. Would a Prof/Dean like Dustin have a contract with an end date that HC didn't fulfill? Or does tenure work differently?
It is interesting to read about these suits where employees view their jobs as almost a deeded property right and expect to be paid to transfer it back to the employer.
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Post by longsuffering on Jul 8, 2021 15:43:01 GMT -5
If he is guilty (not in the legal sense but in the real sense) he should slink away in shame, be happy that he was not prosecuted for some crime, and drop the suit. If he's not guilty he should defend his good name. Guilt is in the eye of the beholder in these he said, she said cases that don't proceed to criminal or civil charges where guilt can be determined by a third party. Interesting that the 2019 complaints were by two male SJWs defending the honor of female students who rejected the paternalistic protection according to Dustin. |
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Post by newfieguy74 on Jul 8, 2021 16:21:41 GMT -5
I've always assumed it was almost unheard of to fire a tenured professor, and I have head stories of shocking bad behavior by tenured academics that brought no discipline but there are no doubt certain types of misbehavior that will not be overlooked.
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Post by mm67 on Jul 8, 2021 17:05:15 GMT -5
Does Dustin have a case? I suspect the issue around which the litigation will revolve may be:
Did the school violate his terms of employment as laid out in the contract? Or, something like that. Failure to establish his guilt will be used to support his contention that HC violated his contractual rights. Was he deprived of due process as laid out in the contract? Fired without due cause?
The facts and settlement will be haggled over by the attorneys. Still believe an out of court settlement will be the ultimate disposition. It is in the best interests of both sides to settle & move on. M-ON-E-Y!
Could be totally in error. I'm not a lawyer. No doubt one of the lawyers could provide a better informed, more accurate analysis.
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Post by newfieguy74 on Jul 8, 2021 17:12:08 GMT -5
I'm a lawyer and do some litigation, but I am not an employment lawyer. It depends on the details of the contractual relationship between the college and tenured faculty. I'm sure there are explicit provisions about how and when a professor can be fired. It's true that many civil cases are settled, but sometimes there are cases where there are good reasons to draw a line in the sand, and this might be one of them.
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Post by longsuffering on Jul 8, 2021 18:39:31 GMT -5
One definition of tenure on Google is "a right to due process." So, that might be the test in the lawsuit, whether the due process HC provided Dustin was adequate.
Tenure seems anachronistic to me. It supposedly protects academic freedom, but that should be able to be protected without giving people a lifetime appointment like they are on the Supreme Court or something.
Colleges have dropped S.A.T. scores, financial aid loans, mascots, etc. It might be hard for one selective school to unilaterally disarm and drop tenure because it could lose it's superstar professors. Maybe some schools have dropped tenure and I didn't notice but economic pressures on higher Ed. should cause colleges to examine all expenses and commitments.
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Post by rgs318 on Jul 8, 2021 19:30:53 GMT -5
I have never heard if a school "dropping" tenure. They can, however, make it harder to get. I was never interested in getting tenure, but I did become a full professor (which is totally separate from tenure) before I retired.
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Post by timholycross on Jul 8, 2021 19:31:01 GMT -5
Appropriate time to ask- what's the status of Gibbons' case?
It can't help that Nate Pine is gone, the person who replaced him is gone (can't remember his name) and Boroughs is gone.
Is the former coach retired completely or pursuing other career interests? Clearly he's not coaching anywhere.
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Post by newfieguy74 on Jul 8, 2021 19:44:13 GMT -5
Many colleges, even elite ones, are reducing the number of tenure track positions. It's a tough time to be an academic. There are a lot of gypsy Ph.D's, teaching adjunct courses for low pay and no benefits. All I wanted to do when I was at HC was to get my Ph.D in English and teach. I was accepted into some of the best programs, but the job uncertainty, even then, freaked me out and I went to law school. This is a guess, but I can't imagine that HC has fired many tenured faculty in the last 50 years.
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Post by HCFC45 on Jul 8, 2021 19:53:08 GMT -5
While I am not an attorney and only know what I have heard and read, part of Fr. B.'s legacy will be the unresolved litigation cases.... I will agree with those who have praised Fr B. for his pastoral accomplishments! First of all he was a priest, a pastor and was by all means very good! But as an administrator dealing with several lawsuits he was a failure! He left the incoming President with failure to settle the Gibbons lawsuit and the failure to settle the lawsuits regarding the women's rowing accident. Now comes the Dustin lawsuit. Hopefully, Vince will be able to settle these quickly and move on...
He surely has more than enough on his plate going forward....
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Post by newfieguy74 on Jul 8, 2021 20:20:34 GMT -5
I don't see these as a failure by Fr. B in any way. I assume he largely defers to the advice he is given by HC's general counsel and by outside counsel. Keep in mind that the pandemic brought court proceedings to a complete stop; nothing happened. Even pre-pandemic civil cases took years to resolve. The rowing accident case will almost certainly be settled. The BG lawsuit I'm not so sure. What should Fr. B have done with these cases? Open the checkbook and write a check in whatever amount the plaintiff wants? This is an unwarranted criticism of Fr. B.
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Post by longsuffering on Jul 8, 2021 20:51:17 GMT -5
Appropriate time to ask- what's the status of Gibbons' case? It can't help that Nate Pine is gone, the person who replaced him is gone (can't remember his name) and Boroughs is gone. Is the former coach retired completely or pursuing other career interests? Clearly he's not coaching anywhere. The former interim AD has the same name as every fifth guy in a Boston sports bar: "Sully" Brendan Sullivan.😊 |
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Post by longsuffering on Jul 8, 2021 20:57:21 GMT -5
I don't see these as a failure by Fr. B in any way. I assume he largely defers to the advice he is given by HC's general counsel and by outside counsel. Keep in mind that the pandemic brought court proceedings to a complete stop; nothing happened. Even pre-pandemic civil cases took years to resolve. The rowing accident case will almost certainly be settled. The BG lawsuit I'm not so sure. What should Fr. B have done with these cases? Open the checkbook and write a check in whatever amount the plaintiff wants? This is an unwarranted criticism of Fr. B. Father B. raised enough money so that HC can resolve these suits from a position of strength if and when necessary. President Vince has the background to shepherd these to the best conclusion possible. We no longer have a Jesuit at the helm but in a litigious world it's nice to have a former law school Dean on Mahogany Row. |
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Post by newfieguy74 on Jul 9, 2021 7:20:31 GMT -5
Appropriate time to ask- what's the status of Gibbons' case? It can't help that Nate Pine is gone, the person who replaced him is gone (can't remember his name) and Boroughs is gone. Is the former coach retired completely or pursuing other career interests? Clearly he's not coaching anywhere. The former interim AD has the same name as every fifth guy in a Boston sports bar: "Sully" Brendan Sullivan.😊 According to the Court's online docket the discovery deadline was extended in March 2021. The pandemic no doubt slowed the progress of the case. Sometimes, after the parties conduct depositions (parties and witnesses asked questions under oath) the parties takes a more clear-eyed view of the case. Settlement discussions might accelerate but it depends what everyone's expectations are. |
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Post by sader1970 on Jul 9, 2021 11:15:54 GMT -5
I lean more with 45 on this one. Lawyers (i.e. "general counsel") advise and don't make decisions as they aren't paid to do that. Fr. B and the BoT are the ones that are supposed to do that. Note, while I wanted to say, "they're the ones who get paid the 'big bucks'." I couldn't do that in this case as Fr. B's "salary" is de minimis being a Jesuit and I believe the BoT members are there on a voluntary/unpaid basis. But they're the ones who both make these decisions and also the ones who create or minimize an environment that might be more conducive for lawsuits.
As for successor Vince, it was considered a truism that if you want to ruin any business, have a lawyer be your CEO. My own experience with General Counsel was they could tell you 5 different reasons why whichever side of a case you were on, you'd lose.
One of my funny experiences during a day and a half deposition in which an extremely large P&C company was suing the insurance industry for almost $20 million and I was the "expert" (I use that term very loosely) for the defendant industry, opposing counsel was a Harvard law school grad full-of-himself lawyer from a big shot Boston law firm who first tried to get on my good side prior to the depo by implying I went to a great college because I was a classmate of Clarence Thomas. I asked him where he got that misinformation since Thomas was NOT my classmate despite both of us being Holy Cross grads and roughly the same age. He said he got that from my LinkedIn profile. I confirmed we both went to HC but Thomas was a year behind me having transferred in from a seminary. You could see on his face that he was deflated as he thought the info was going to help "groom" me.
That set the stage for the deposition when he asked me if it had ever been my experience in 42 years of insurance claims experience that two lawyers might have differing opinions on a claim. I assured him that it was often my experience that two lawyers would have not two opinions but 3, 4 or 5 opinions on a case. That set everyone in the room into laughter, especially the non-lawyers (videographer, stenographer and the paralegals in the room) but even the lawyers laughed and opposing counsel reluctantly smiled. While I knew he expected me to agree with him, he didn't expect the degree that I would so readily agree with him.
As I expected, the case settled out of court for about 25% of the suit. In reality, the insurer didn't deserve a dime as they royally screwed up a case they were handling on behalf of the industry and should not have been indemnified due to gross negligence on their part but the industry as a whole decided it would just be better to have the whole thing go away and the insurer decided to cut its losses. No question that the folks who made out best were Mr. Harvard law and defendant counsel Mr. Stanford Law firm (classic east coast/west coast lawyers).
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Post by newfieguy74 on Jul 9, 2021 12:21:37 GMT -5
That's a good story. I've always enjoyed seeing lawyers who were full of themselves get brought down to earth. As a new lawyer I was sitting in Worcester Superior Court. Another civil case, scheduled for trial, was called. Defense counsel, a large Boston firm was there with a partner, associate and bulging trial briefcases. Plaintiff's counsel, a Worcester attorney, asked the Court for a continuance. Defense counsel was apoplectic and finally said to the Judge: "Your Honor, we drove all the way from Boston." The late, often curmudgeonly Judge John Henry Meagher, leaned over and said: "Did you see any indians on the way?" The case was continued.
I stand my my statement that it's very unfair to say Fr. B was a "failure" because he didn't resolve the BG and rowing team lawsuits. I'm curious, what would "success" have looked like? What outcome, how much money offered?
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Post by Tom on Jul 9, 2021 12:38:07 GMT -5
Although everything in the legal system is backed up because of COVID, and as such it's not a horrible assumption, but do we KNOW that the BG suit hasn't been settled yet. I would kind of assume that when it is settled there isn't going to be any sort of press release
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Post by alum on Jul 9, 2021 13:56:59 GMT -5
Although everything in the legal system is backed up because of COVID, and as such it's not a horrible assumption, but do we KNOW that the BG suit hasn't been settled yet. I would kind of assume that when it is settled there isn't going to be any sort of press release Newfieguy posted above that the court's online docket shows that it is pending and that discovery is ongoing. |
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Jul 11, 2021 12:05:48 GMT -5
HC is covered by insurance. IMO, BG has a weak case, --ultimately, in my belief, turning on his claim of age discrimination; i.e., his contract was not renewed, he was entitled to a renewal, and the reason for not renewing his contract was that he was making too much money and the women's basketball program was deep in the red. He was making the money he was making because of his long-term seniority (the age part). (<Partly due to CRW making so much $$, BG's compensation also rose proportionately because of Title IX factors, and increased further with time because of the salary base built up when CRW was at HC.) BG alleges that the college's deliberate plan was to not renew his contract, and once he was gone, replace him with a new, younger head coach at a significantly lower salary. If this case ever gets to the discovery phase, that part of the deposition dealing with Cooper and the other student-athlete complainant should be interesting. |
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Post by CHC8485 on Jul 11, 2021 12:53:45 GMT -5
I believe the age discrimination claim was dismissed by the judge sometime last year due to a procedural misstep by BGs lawyer not filing a claim with a federal or state discrimination committee first.
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Post by sader1970 on Jul 11, 2021 13:04:54 GMT -5
I always liked BG personally but felt like Carmody he was "mailing it in" after many years of success.
It would appear that his case is all about Holy Cross damaging his reputation as he can't claim they fired him since they simply didn't renew his contract. The damaged reputation is more than a bit nebulous. I believe he's claimed he hasn't been offered any other jobs and attributes that to having been besmirched by the College. Would think that'd be hard to prove when his record over his last 4 full seasons was:
2017-2018: 13-18
2016-2017: 8-22
2015-2016: 13-17
2014-2015: 15-17
Total: 49-74 = 39.8%
Near as I can figure, in his last, partial season (suspended on or about 1/31/19), the record was 11-9, which was an improvement, obviously, but was on a 3-6 string his last 9 games. Suspending him meant he was getting his salary without having to coach/earn it. Financially he probably wasn't hurt and an argument could be made that he could/should have used that time to start looking elsewhere. He could have resigned and likely have been able to move on.
Even in the best of times, Bill had a volatile personality to be polite about it.
I always wished he had just walked away or failing that, taken on some back office role with the athletic department which would have perhaps salvaged his reputation.
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