Cases & Developments - National Association of College and University Attorneys

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Latest Cases & Developments

Date:
9/22/2023
Prater v. Trs. of Hamline Univ. of Minn. (D. Minn. Sep. 15, 2023)
Order granting-in-part and denying-in-part Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiff, a former adjunct instructor in the Art and Digital Media Department at Hamline University, brought state-law religious discrimination, retaliation, defamation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress claims against the University after it declined to renew her contract following a campus controversy surrounding art she displayed over Zoom in her World Art class containing images of the Prophet Muhammad. In permitting plaintiff to proceed on her religious discrimination claim, the court found she had sufficiently alleged that the University treated her differently than it would have treated her if she were Muslim. It dismissed her retaliation claim, finding that her statement to the dean that not showing the images would be discriminatory because it would privilege the views of those who objected over the views of those who did not was insufficient to allege a statutorily protected report of discrimination. Her defamation claim failed because assertions that her actions were “Islamophobic,” “disrespectful,” and “inappropriate” were nonactionable expressions of opinion. Her IIED claim failed because plaintiff’s alleged distress resulted not from the alleged statements of University officials but from the subsequent media coverage.
Topics:
Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration | Religious Discrimination & Accommodation | Retaliation | Tort Litigation
Date:
9/1/2023
Kollias v. Univ. of Rochester (W.D. N.Y. Aug. 30, 2023)
Decision and Order granting Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment. In the early morning hours of December 5, 2015, plaintiff and a friend, both students at the University of Rochester, left a fraternity party with two women the friend met through Facebook. The women drove to a house where plaintiff and his friend were assaulted and held captive in retaliation for the robbery of several non-student drug dealers that a University football player had orchestrated the week before at the friend’s off-campus, University-owned apartment. After the football player was arrested, a coach signed bail paperwork, and the University issued an interim suspension and banned him from campus. Plaintiff brought multiple negligence claims against the University, and although he failed to meaningfully oppose the summary judgment motion, the court dismissed each claim on the merits. The court dismissed the duty to warn claim finding that the Clery Act, which plaintiff asserted as the basis for a duty of care, does not create a standard of care actionable in tort. His claim that the University selectively enforced its drug policy against the football player was dismissed for lack of evidence that the University was on notice of the player’s drug-related activity. Plaintiff’s negligence claim based on the coach’s role in bailing the football player out of jail failed for want of causation since the retaliation plot began before the player made bail. Finally, his claim that the University obstructed the investigation into his disappearance failed because only 35 minutes passed from when his friends reported him missing to when the University Public Safety reported it to the Rochester Police.
Topics:
Campus Police, Safety, & Crisis Management | Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration | Tort Litigation
Date:
8/25/2023
Iyebote v. Meharry Med. Coll. (M.D. Tenn. Aug. 22, 2023)
Report and Recommendation to enforce parties’ settlement agreement. Plaintiff, a former participant in the residency program at Meharry Medical College, brought sexual harassment, retaliation, and disability discrimination claims against the College after she reported incidents of harassment to a supervisor and was terminated from the program. After the court granted-in-part and denied-in-part the College’s motion for summary judgment, the parties agreed in mediation to terms to settle the remaining claims, including plaintiff’s return to the program. Plaintiff, however, refused to enter into the proposed Settlement Agreement and Release, citing that she had subsequently learned that the School’s accreditation was probationary, which she alleged would make it harder for her to transfer to a different program. In recommending to grant the School’s motion to enforce the agreement, the U.S. Magistrate Judge first noted that plaintiff was not a resident in the program when the School’s accreditor placed its programs on probationary status and required it to provide notice to its residents. The court then held (1) that the School did not otherwise have a duty to notify plaintiff of its accreditation status, and (2) that plaintiff had presented no evidence that the School had otherwise concealed the information, which was posted on its website, or that the accreditation status would make her transfer harder.
Topics:
Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration
Date:
8/18/2023
Du v. The Regents of the Univ. of Cal. (Cal. App. Aug. 14, 2023)
Opinion affirming summary judgment in favor of the University. Plaintiff, who slipped on a “liquid substance” in a parking garage at UCLA, sued the University under a California statute providing for “public entity liability for injuries caused by a dangerous condition of public property.” The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of the University, finding plaintiff’s speculation insufficient to overcome the University’s evidence that the company it hired to inspect the garage twice a day had inspected the area 30 minutes before the incident and found it clean and, accordingly, that the University lacked constructive notice of a dangerous condition. In affirming, the California Court of Appeals declined to adopt a requirement that public entities inspect parking areas more frequently or that they inspect underneath the vehicles currently parked there.
Topics:
Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration | Tort Litigation
Date:
8/18/2023
Williams v. Morgan State Univ. (Md. Aug. 14, 2023)
Opinion answering a certified question. Plaintiff, a former Director of Broadcast Operations at Morgan State University, brought state-law wrongful termination and defamation claims and federal retaliation claims under the National Defense Authorization Act and the American Recovery Reinvestment Act against the University and multiple officials after she was terminated purportedly for alleging violations federal law. The district court dismissed plaintiff’s federal claims, finding that the Maryland Tort Claims Act (MTCA) did not waive the State’s sovereign immunity with respect to the claims. In answering a question certified to it by the Fourth Circuit, the Maryland Supreme Court held that “a tort action” under the MTCA does not include federal statutory claims, noting that “there is no evidence that the General Assembly intended to include federal statutory claims within the scope of the MTCA” and that a contrary approach “would produce results that are inconsistent with the MTCA’s main purposes.”
Topics:
Faculty & Staff | Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration | Retaliation | Tort Litigation
Date:
8/18/2023
Doe v. Haverford Coll (E.D. Pa. Aug. 7, 2023)
Memorandum granting-in-part and denying-in-part Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiff is a recent graduate of Haverford College and a former co-captain of a varsity sports team. Following rumors that he had sexually assaulted a female student, plaintiff, at his coach’s suggestion, emailed teammates that he would “briefly step away from the team,” but after the Title IX Office declined to open an investigation, the coach denied his request to rejoin the team, citing other players’ concerns. Plaintiff brought contract, defamation, and Title IX claims against the College and his former coach. The court permitted his contract claim against the college to proceed, finding he had sufficiently alleged a breach of the College’s Sexual Misconduct Policy, which stated that it would not impose a disciplinary sanction “arising from an allegation of Sexual Misconduct without holding a Hearing and permitting an Appeal, unless otherwise resolved through an Alternative Resolution Process.” The court also permitted his defamation claim against the coach to proceed, finding that statements about the alleged assault and about plaintiff’s mental health made in a meeting with administrators and plaintiff’s co-captains were defamatory and that any determination that the statements were privileged or protected opinion was premature at this point. It dismissed his Title IX claim, however, finding he had not alleged that he was excluded or harassed on the basis of his sex.
Topics:
Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration | Sexual Misconduct | Title IX & Student Sexual Misconduct | Tort Litigation
Date:
8/11/2023
Edwards v. Cal. Univ. of Pa. (W.D. Pa. Aug. 4, 2023)
Opinion granting-in-part and denying-in-part Defendants’ Motions to Dismiss. Plaintiff, the administrator of the estate of a football player at California University of Pennsylvania who died of COVID-19 in September 2020, brought substantive due process and state-law claims against the University, alleging that it took insufficient measures “to prevent or mitigate the spread of COVID-19” when it permitted student-athletes to return to campus for Fall 2020. In dismissing plaintiff’s substantive due process claims with prejudice, the court held that plaintiff failed to allege conduct that shocks the conscience, noted the numerous mitigation actions taken by the University mentioned in plaintiff’s factual allegations. The court deferred a decision on exercising supplemental jurisdiction over plaintiff’s state-law claims pending consideration of claims against one defendant who did not appear in this action.
Topics:
Campus Police, Safety, & Crisis Management | Constitutional Issues | Coronavirus | Due Process | Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration | Tort Litigation
Date:
8/4/2023
Massey v. Va. Polytechnic Inst. & Commonwealth of Va. (4th Cir. July 31, 2023)
Opinion vacating and remanding dismissal. Plaintiff, a former employee of Virginia Tech who had taken medical leave in April 2019 to recover from surgery, sued the University after it eliminated his position in October 2019 for financial reasons. He originally filed suit in Virginia state court under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. He took a voluntary nonsuit of that action and filed a federal action in January 2021. The district court granted the University’s motion to dismiss on the grounds that the claim was barred under the one-year statute of limitations from the Virginia Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act. The Fourth Circuit reversed, holding that under Virginia law a nonsuit tolls the statute of limitations even when, as here, sovereign immunity bars the claims in state court and that it was sufficient that the state court had potential jurisdiction even though it lacked active subject matter jurisdiction.
Topics:
Disability Discrimination | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration | Retaliation
Date:
8/4/2023
Askin v. Univ. of Notre Dame (Ky. Ct. App. July 28, 2023)
Opinion affirming summary judgment in favor of the University. Plaintiff, a former football player at the University of Notre Dame in the 1980s and later in the NFL who suffers from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), brought personal injury claims against the University, alleging that his CTE was the result of multiple concussions he experienced as a student-athlete. In affirming summary judgment in favor of the University, the Court of Appeals of Kentucky held that plaintiff’s claims were time barred, noting that under the discovery rule his claims accrued in 2014 when he was put on notice of the harm through a discussion with a pain management nurse of pending litigation with the NFL, rather than in 2018 when he was diagnosed with CTE.
Topics:
Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration | Student Athlete Issues | Students | Tort Litigation
Date:
6/9/2023
J.L. v. Rockefeller Univ. (N.Y. Sup. Ct. May 25, 2023)
Decision and Order granting-in-part and denying-in-part Defendant’s Partial Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiff alleged that he was sexually assaulted by a doctor employed by Rockefeller University Hospital between 1957 and 1966, when he was between the ages of seven and sixteen, during appointments for physical exams. The court permitted plaintiff to proceed in his negligent hiring, retention, supervision and/or direction claim, finding that he had sufficiently alleged that hospital staff were aware that the doctor was abusing children and that he had taken inappropriate photographs of his victims while they were patients in the hospital. It dismissed his intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress claims, finding the allegations duplicative of the negligence claims. In dismissed his breach of duty in loco parentis claim, finding that because the hospital did not have long-term custody or supervision of plaintiff, the duty applicable to schools as contemplated in the case law did not apply to the hospital.
Topics:
Compliance & Risk Management | Discrimination, Accommodation, & Diversity | Employee Sexual Misconduct | Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration | Sex Discrimination | Tort Litigation

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