More Bad Behavior at St. Thomas University College of Law

Alexander Lugo at ALM/Law.com recently wrote about some of the allegations of bad behavior at St. Thomas University College of Law in Miami Gardens, Florida, including allegations extracted from complaints to the ABA filed by STUCL faculty and from a lawsuit I filed on behalf of former STUCL Professor Lauren Gilbert, which recently settled.   The Law.Com story noted that I was representing another STUCL professor who was threatening to file suit, but I declined to provide any details to Mr. Lugo at that time.  At the time, I was still holding out some hope that STUCL might be willing to engage in good faith negotiations to resolve my client's concerns.  Unfortunately, they were not.

This week, I have filed a new lawsuit against STUCL on behalf of that previously unnamed client, Assistant Professor Claire Osborne-Thomas.  As the lawsuit is now a matter of public record, and likely to be of interest to the law professoriate, I thought I would share with TFL readers some of the details.  Many TFL readers may know Claire from her teaching or scholarship.  Claire was previously a tenured professor at Thomas Jefferson Law School in San Diego (back when they were ABA-Accredited), but was not given tenure when she made the lateral move to St. Thomas to be closer to her family.  After compiling a stellar record of teaching, scholarship and service at STUCL, including teacher of the year in 2022-2023, Claire applied for tenure in 2023-2024.   She received the strong backing of the tenure and promotion committee and had several strong external reviews.  The Dean, an STUCL graduate and former state court judge appointed by the University President without any input from the faculty (one of the school's many violations of ABA Standards), recommended that tenure be denied.   For months, she refused to provide a copy of her recommendation to Claire, falsely claiming that Claire was not entitled to see it.  After threatening to sue, I was finally able to obtain a copy of the recommendation, and it immediately became clear why the Dean didn't want to share it.  The recommendation completely ignored the tenure standards that the Dean was supposed to apply.  Her recommendation to deny tenure was instead based on demonstrably false, unsupported and defamatory claims about Claire's behavior.  In the lawsuit I filed, we allege that the Dean wrote this recommendation at the direction of the President, who had decided he would not support Claire for tenure in retaliation for her appeal of an unjust reprimand that he had forced the previous Dean to give her.  The reprimand, later reduced to a warning, was for a non-incident where Claire had chosen not to report to campus security a bizarre, non-specific, vaguely threatening message of unknown origin shown to her by a student.   Although the school determined the message to be misinformation and not a threat within hours of Claire's decision that it was not worth reporting, the President nonetheless directed that the Acting Dean reprimand her for her failure to report.   The lawsuit further alleges that the President's underlying motivation for reprimanding Claire was because he was trying to build a case to terminate her colleague Lauren Gilbert, who also was aware of the hoax message and likewise chose not to report it. The President also ordered that Lauren be reprimanded for this incident, and later cited this non-event as a basis for seeking to terminate her.  Both Lauren and Claire appealed the reprimands they received.  The complaint further alleges that the President urged Claire to drop her appeal, and promised that her future career at STUCL would be brilliant if she did so, but threatened that if she continued to try to have the letter removed from her file (using normal channels for appeal set forth in the employee handbook) that her future at the law school would not be so brilliant.  The President also made it clear that the reprimand/warning was "not about her" but rather was about Lauren and urged Claire to consider what she could do for the University.  Claire refused to back down and refused to involve herself in what she considered to be a dastardly plot against Lauren.  True to his word, the complaint alleges that the President personally ensured that Claire's tenure application was disapproved, completely disregarding her record of teaching, service and scholarship, in retaliation for refusing his entreaties.  Claire did appeal the denial of tenure, but after a month without any response to her appeal, she authorized me to file suit. 

For those interested in further details about the case, a copy of the complaint, with numerous exhibits attached, is linked below.

Download Osborn-Wright Complaint with exhibits

Comments

[Seen Alot]

Unfortunately, many law schools are filled with this type of nonsense. I know of excellent candidates shunned by various schools for no reason other than "office politics" in order to make room for inferior faculty who "know the right people". I once recommended a wonderful PhD with actual SSCI peer reviewed publications a stellar academic record but was not even called in for an interview. The committee chair pushed a "friend" a clearly lesser candidate who has yet to be published.
I have also encountered Deans who play games by providing misinformation and/or false information to faculty committees blocking certain individuals from either being hired or obtaining tenure.
Let us be honest with ouselves, the academy has serious problems which I suspect is applicable to other fields not just law.

[anon]

I actually welcome efforts to expose the juvenile and corrupt operations of faculty hiring and promotions. The petty and the venal is all too common, as the comment above suggests.
However, it is also sort of cringy to have a lawyer using this site to file his briefs and thereby, presumably, seek advantage in court.
In court, the rules apply.
Here, there are no rules, save perhaps Lubet's "delete" button, which he uses in seemingly unpredictable ways.
The post claims that this is of interest to the legal professoriate. True, I believe.
However, the advocacy, the spin, the one-sided presentation, the lack of any tie to the greater issues (that is, greater than the self interest), dilutes, IMHO, any such appeal to interest.
Except, of course, the gossip interest, which law faculties are known to delight in.

[Perplexed]

What possible advantage in court would posting a link to a complaint, a document which publicly available on the Miami-Dade clerk of court website, on The Faculty Lounge provide? This ignorant comment is kind of “cringy”.

[anon]

Spoken like someone who has never litigated a case, and has no clue about how a "media campaign" to drum up support in the relevant community may be employed in an attempt to pressure the adversary. (This strategy clearly didn't work on this person: the inference being this person has no influence. In the "Faculty Lounge" comes the baffled inquiry by "Perplexed"??? Indeed. Where else?)
Also, this comment demonstrates a seeming lack of awareness of prior efforts in like regards.
Perplexed?
Clearly.

[Perplexed]

Anon -

You said that the blogger was seeking an advantage in court. A media campaign to drum up support within the academic community makes sense. That might even create some
pressure on the opposing party to settle out of court. But I still don’t think a post on this site will translate into an advantage in court.

[anon]

Perplexed
Point taken. You say "A media campaign to drum up support within the academic community makes sense [and in certain cases might] create some pressure on the opposing party to settle out of court."
Without coming to a definitive conclusion about the purposes of the post above, I understand your point. Dare I say, I agree with it!
But, you say, if in some hypothetical case such pressure, in whole or in part, affected or influenced the decision by an adversary to settle a case pending in court, that just wouldn't constitute having gained an advantage in court.
That sort of sums it up.

[Guest]

I applaud the outing of this type of nonsense. Indeed,it is a very corrupt system how these "committees" and Deans often conduct decision making. Fortunately, there ARE exceptions where good governance prevails and objective fair decisions are made. But often games and politics are the determinative factors. This is a conversation urgently needed.

[anon]

Guest
FWIW, I agree 100% that the truly lawless and juvenile manner in which many law faculties and administrations have behaved merits scrutiny and accountability, at long last.
I do wish this scrutiny could be performed by an outside group of persons with no self interest, and that the "powers that be" could then buy into the process and render accountability fairly and disinterestedly, without any whiff of self interest.
Unfortunately, law professors seem to be ruled by their selfish, and often petty, whims and their grandiose views of themselves.

[That guy]

I love this place. Twitching spergs hiding out in treetops, shouting out rude names. Don't ever change.

[anon]

Had to look up "sperg"
(slang, derogatory, offensive) A person who displays ... behavior stereotypically associated with Asperger's syndrome.
Who could disagree with "That guy" about "shouting out rude names"? "That guy" so brilliantly tears apart those who do so.
"That guy" has leveled an impressive attack on the comments above, and the disabled, and has displayed the sort of self-righteous hypocrisy that allows the behaviors the comments decry, all in one deft spew.
Well done!
Typical, isn't it?

[That guy]

Quite. I can almost smell the smoke venting out of your ears from here. Please keep posting!

[A non]

"Twitching spergs hiding out in treetops, shouting out rude names."

Was this supposed to be ironic, or is that just how That Guy self-identifies?

[That guy]

"Was this supposed to be ironic, or is that just how That Guy self-identifies?"

Was this supposed to be law professor-ese for, "I know you are, but what am I?"