Tag Archives: Brandon Austin lawsuit

Who knows how many millions of dollars and how much damage to UO’s “brand” Dana Altman and his enablers have cost us so far, and how much is still to come. But for now, Dylan Darling has the good news in the RG here:

… U.S. District Judge Michael McShane in Eugene earlier this month dismissed the cases brought by Brandon Austin, Dominic Artis and Damyean Dotson. The court entered the ruling into the record Wednesday and the lawsuits are open to appeal, but may not be filed again.

“This has been a long and complicated road, but we could not be more satisfied with the outcome,” UO Vice President and General Counsel Kevin Reed said Wednesday in a statement. “While we were confident from the beginning that our processes and protocols were followed properly and complied with our legal obligations and our duty of fairness, this brings to a close any legitimate speculation to the contrary. We are glad to have this situation in our rear view mirror and that we can now confirm that the university’s professionals conducted themselves in compliance with the law.” …

The docket is here. Congratulations to UO GC Kevin Reed:

10/30/2016 update:  Long story after the break, which I suppose is a good thing for those that bill by the hour.

The latest is that the judge has given UO’s hired lawyers an extension from 10/28 until 12/2 to respond to the players lawyers’ response to the judge’s response to the UO lawyers’ request for dismissal, as well as an extension to respond to the players lawyers’ 3rd complaint, which of course was amended in response to the UO lawyers’ response to the players lawyer’s 2nd complaint. In case that’s not perfectly clear, here’s a free link to the docket, from the freelaw.org hack of the federal court’s paywalled database. Oh, wait, there are two dockets – maybe the links you want are here.

10/11/2016: Dana Altman’s players refile discrimination complaint against Gottfredson, UO

Continue reading →

9/8/2016: Federal Judge McShane has ruled in favor of UO. The Emerald has the story here. Duck advocate Tobin Klinger has the party line in Around the O, the official organ of the Ducks:

“The court’s decision dismissed all of the students’ claims and upholds the University’s position that the students were afforded appropriate due process under the UO’s student conduct code. In addition, it affirms that the student conduct processes are separate and independent of criminal matters.

But Klinger fails to report that Judge McShane left the door open to refiling. And, according to the more accurate report by the Oregonian’s Tyson Alger here, it seems that the young men’s legal counsel, well-known celebrity attorney Alex Spiro, plans to try phoning it in one more time:

Court documents show that many of the claims of the players against the university were dismissed without prejudice, meaning they’ll be allowed to refile within the next 30 days. U.S. District Judge Michael McShane did dismiss the players’ claim of not receiving due process with prejudice, meaning that it can’t be refiled.

“We are simply redrafting the pleadings and moving forward with the case pursuant to the court’s decision,” said Alex Spiro, the lawyer for Dotson and Artis.

Judge McShane’s full opinion is here. I believe this is the last of the lawsuits related to the alleged rapes on the night of March 8, 2014, if it ever ends. UO paid Jane Doe $800K, Morlok and Stokes $425K, $2.5K for Shelly Kerr’s ethics fine, and unknown amounts for lawyers, including defending UO attorneys Doug Park and Sam Hill from an Bar ethics complaint. And, of course, UO’s “brand” took a huge hit.

As it happens, just an hour before this opinion was released Duck AD Rob Mullens was talking to the UO Board of Trustees. They had no questions for him about any of this, including why the academic budget had to pay for it.

The gist of Judge McShane’s decision:

I’m no law professor, but it seems pretty clear-cut. UO’s Deputy Counsel Doug Park offered the student-athletes a deal that would allow them to go play basketball somewhere else, and they took it after getting advice from their own lawyers:

Then they had second thoughts. Judge McShane essentially said “too bad, a deal’s a deal”.

8/27/2016: Celebrity lawyer Alex Spiro calls Dana Altman’s black basketball players “boys”

Continue reading →

The full docket is here, courtesy of Carl Malamud’s RecapTheLaw. The RG’s Alisha Roemeling has a report here. The intro:

The University of Oregon went to federal court Tuesday to argue that lawsuits filed by three former UO basketball players against the university should be thrown out.

After a three-hour hearing, U.S. District Judge Michael McShane said he expects to take several weeks to review all the materials, including police reports, before rendering a ruling.

The three former players — Dominic Artis, Damyean Dotson and Brandon Austin — all filed lawsuits after they were expelled and banned from campus for up to 10 years for allegedly raping a female student at an off-campus party in March 2014. The players acknowledged a sexual encounter occurred but said the woman consented to it. …

I’ve never been in a Federal courtroom before so I decided to go listen to the arguments. Wow, someone spent a lot of someone else’s money on this building. Not as nice as the Jock Box or Trump Tower, but nicer than, say, PLC.

There were about 20 spectators, including a bunch of law student types and a pile of UO lawyers, including Doug Park. I didn’t see Randy Geller or Mike Gottfredson. Court started 30 minutes late because no one could get the video feed to Artis’s lawyer Alex Spiro in NY working. Eventually they gave up. And you feel bad when you waste 30 seconds of class time getting powerpoint to work – imagine if your students were billing $250 an hour.

In a nutshell, New Jersey attorney Alan Milstein – a self-described expert on sperm donor law – argued that the alleged basketball gang rapists should be able to sue UO because they had a “property and liberty interest” in a college education, which UO took away without due process. He also argued that UO discriminated against the male players by treating them more harshly than it would have treated women – a Title IX violation.

UO was represented by Michelle Barton Smigel of Portland’s Miller Nash firm, one of the lawyers whom Scott Coltrane paid to sue Jane Doe for “damaging a good man’s reputation”:

I get it about everyone having the right to an aggressive defense, but I don’t think that requires an attorney to go along with an idiotic idea like this. Or was it her idea? Maybe Doug Park’s? Coltrane blamed it on his attorneys:

Coltrane, however, criticized the online petition that characterized the UO as having filed a lawsuit against the victim, as opposed to responding to a lawsuit. He said he was advised by attorneys that it’s routine to counter a suit.

“Their suit would have us pay legal fees, and I was told it’s typical when you respond” to also file a counterclaim, he said.

Smigel was assisted by some guy whose main responsibility involved yellow post-it notes. I wonder what we’re paying for those – and if Gottfredson is paying for his share of them? I asked, but UO General Counsel Kevin Reed isn’t going to tell:

Any such information is solidly within the attorney/client privilege, so I am afraid I am precluded from providing you with a substantive answer.

Kevin S. Reed | Vice President and General Counsel

Office of the General Counsel

219 Johnson Hall | Eugene, OR 97403-1226

Milstein came across as a blowhard who hadn’t done his homework. His colleague (Michaels? Williams? Williamson? No one seemed sure) was a bit more informed. Judge McShane kept things moving with good questions. Dominic Artis’s lawyer Alex Spiro eventually got on the speaker phone, but from the cheering it sounded like he was in a sports bar, and the court reporter couldn’t make out whatever he was trying to say. McShane generously gave him a week to get his thoughts in order and mail them in.

In terms of substance, the Second Circuit Court’s July 29th  decision in the Columbia University case is obviously going to give the players a lot of help on the Title IX angle. Here’s InsideHigherEd’s take:

A federal appeals court on Friday revived a lawsuit accusing Columbia University of engaging in illegal antimale bias in the way it responded in 2013 to a female student’s allegation of sex assault by a male student.

The suit was filed under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which bars sex discrimination by colleges receiving federal funds. The finding could be significant not only for those in the case but for many other colleges involved in litigation over their findings on sex assault allegations.

… Pavela said that the decision’s emphasis on Columbia’s possible motivation for siding with female students is likely to suggest a strategy for lawyers who represent male students suing colleges. “More plaintiffs’ attorneys are going to be doing aggressive discovery of our sexual misconduct training materials. Materials written in ways that appear to tilt the proceedings against the accused will be their Holy Grail,” Pavela added.

Fortunately the Ducks are rock solid on the whole sexual misconduct training issue.

He also noted that plaintiffs in Title IX suits can sue for damages and fees for lawyers, making the Title IX approach attractive to many lawyers.

The obviously well-prepared Smigel spent a fair amount of time trying to persuade McShane that the Second District opinion was wrong, which strikes me as a losing game.

Milstein and Michaels argued that Altman’s basketball players should be able to sue UO because they had a right to a college education, which Gottfredson et al then took away from them without due process.  Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t, But that’s not why Altman brought them to UO, and that’s not why they are suing UO. Altman recruited them to play ball, UO paid them to play ball, and they are suing UO because UO’s administrators fired them and hurt their basketball careers. So why isn’t this an employment law case?