The size of the settlement paid suggests something about what the payor estimated the exposure to be. For a big institution, paying 15 or 30 grand is what lawyers call “nuisance value.” You pay that to avoid the costs of defending a case that you think you’ll probably win. Rather, your insurance company pays it. If you are paying 2.8 million bucks, that means your best guess is that a jury would give the plaintiff five million bucks.
“Gilchriese hired Boulder law firm Hutchinson Black and Cook, the same firm that represented Simpson and the victim in the case involving Florida State quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Jameis Winston, who was accused of raping a woman last fall.”
Thanks to OCR’s handiwork, there’s a growth industry now in extracting money from colleges for their handling of alleged campus sexual assaults. The gals/accusers and the guys/accused claim title ix civil rights violations based on how the school proceeds. There’s probably cases where a school pays off BOTH sides for the handling of the same incident.
That same Boulder law firm (which appears to represent primarily gals against colleges) is also representing the Stanford model in a number of lawsuits against her Stanford mentor. Stanford has already paid her a settlement. There’s other law firms in the business of repping the guys against their schools.
The great thing about these cases is that they almost never involve the police or criminal charges. No criminal charges were ever filed in the Colorado/Simpson case, even though it resulted in a $2.5 million payout from the school. No criminal charges in the Stanford model case. Nice racket.
IIRC, the 2007 case with Lisa Simpson and the CU football team involved the university directly. If it is the matter I’m thinking about, school/team booster money was used for the party, recruits were there at the university’s invitation, prostitutes were there, big issues. When the school is directly involved, there is going to be more liability involved. In John Doe’s case, the school wasn’t responsible for the drinking or the sex, but the mishandling of the investigation.
The $15K payment to John Doe suggests that another student with the same fact pattern shouldn’t bother to sue. John Doe didn’t get much out of that suit. The $15K probably went to the lawyers, and the college didn’t admit they were wrong. I don’t see the university admitting that they mishandled the investigation: John Doe was kicked out of CU and he’s not going back, which means they think he did it.
@cardinalfang - you’re right, meritless was not a good word to use. But the Jane Doe admitted to the CU inquiry that she committed perjury and made false or fabricated statements to the Boulder Police. In the real world, say your family life, if your child said he/she lied and made things up, would you not want a lot more information, a lot more confirmation, a lot more evidence? Before you ‘punish’ someone else? You have to read the complaint (2nd link in my previous post - pg 8-14). College is not the same as home life, but I do expect some relationship to reality. I have a daughter and sons and this kind of story makes me crazy with worry for all of them because, consent seems like it should be obvious, but not always and, both sexes need to be really careful. Maybe, without getting too religious about it, wait, wait a long time.
I tend to agree with this, although I would also suspect that the “it” that he did was probably not extremely egregious, or the university wouldn’t have agreed to the deal.
I am still waiting for the lawsuit against the university in the Vanderbilt case that is still ongoing. Allegedly, and I stress allegedly, Vandenburg knew the victim because the football coach at the time had recruited her, along with other women, to act as hostesses during football recruitment week.
“IIRC, the 2007 case with Lisa Simpson and the CU football team involved the university directly.”
CU was dinged for having a policy of showing HS football recruits a “good time” while visting campus and failing to adequately supervise such visits. So sure, there was some “direct” involvement on the part of the university.
But the players and recruits who did the alleged sexual assaulting would have a much more “direct” involvement with this situation. No charges ever filed against the assaulters for their “direct involvement.” But CU pays out $2.5 million for its involvement and also cans its president, athletic director and football coach.
Seems a bit unbalanced to me that the school takes a big hit (perhaps deservedly so) but the attackers… But why bother to pursue the attackers – they don’t have deep pockets.
That’s according to John Doe. We shouldn’t believe all of John Doe’s accusations at face value: he describes an encounter that was completely consensual from beginning to end, and that is obviously not what the university believes to have occurred. Notice that in the part of the complaint with the facts that are agreed to by all parties, the alleged perjury is nowhere to be found.
In an effort to get a higher conviction rate based on accusations, not necessarily accurate or dependable facts, much of Title IX enforcement is no longer about conviction, but about a potential payday for both accuser and accused.
This is market economics at work where illogical rules and processes were mandated to be added to a system and the result is a rise in costs all around for all parties with little resolution of the original issue, i.e., no reduction in alleged rapes and females unhappy with outcomes. True that males are getting rich for being accused, however, at the cost of their reputations - the colleges, the females and the males all lose. It is becoming laughable that there are people who think this makes sense.
@numbersfun: “…consent seems like it should be obvious…”
How so?
I mean that seriously. Even leaving aside the issue of whether someone who’s ingested enough substances to have significantly lowered inhibitions but still be coherent is capable of providing consent, we’ve got a social milieu where talking about sex simply isn’t a comfortable thing, and indirectness is pretty much expected of everyone involved.
We’re undergoing a cultural change in regard to that, I think—but significant cultural changes are often messy, and this whole issue is an example of that.
Lisa Simpson reported the attacks to the police. It’s not under her control whether the DA presses charges.
testament to how traumatizing rape is
It’s hard to imagine any 2 cases with virtually the same fact pattern. Even small differences can make a big difference.
When small payouts are made, often the insu company is telling their client "we are willing to pay this to settle this and no more. If You don’t agree and we lose in court and they are awarded a higher amount, we will not pay it- you will have to. " it’s lousy when an insurance company strong arms their own client , but it’s not all that unusual.
The Lisa Simpson case was nothing like the instance reported upthread. Nothing. Nada.
And I would point out that just because an investigation conducted by the usual crew of activists finds him guilty, doesn’t mean he really is. As we have seen before,.
She claims she can’t contact him, but is able to text him to invite him to come out and party with her AFTER the supposed assault. Only after he declines does she discover that she was assaulted.
I mean, really.
Sounds like his lawyers just didn’t see a big payday and wanted to move on.
I agree that we have no idea whether John Doe is guilty. He might be; he might not be. We shouldn’t take his complaint at face value, just as we shouldn’t take an accuser’s complaint at face value.
Consolation, your second quote is from the John Doe’s complaint. Which we shouldn’t take at face value.
It seems vanishingly unlikely to me that CU both believed John Doe’s story and found him guilty. They found him guilty, so they must believe (incorrectly or correctly) that something other than what he says happened actually did happen. They didn’t find him guilty of consensual sex, because consensual sex isn’t an infraction.
So what did the imposter looking man do wrong? The school rather insulted him in something that he has nothing to do.
When I said ‘consent seems like it should be obvious’, I meant it from an older person, not intoxicated, not under the influence of a bunch of young person hormones and freedom, place. I do remember being in college and doing/acting in ways that seem pretty foreign now, so I’m saying that from this place in life. I was trying to say that what is obvious now, might not have been obvious then, and that is why I used the ‘seems like’ word usage. From a 30+ year vantage point I can see particular actions of mine as stupid and risky, stupid because, irrespective of legal consequence, I might have had to pay the price. I hope my kids and all kids are smarter than me and better educated about consent and risk.
I do think talking about sex is much more common than 30+ years ago and if you speak with any young person today the whole concept of ‘hooking up’ or ’ friends with benefits’ is close to ‘normal’. Rape is not normal. I do think that definitions change, sometimes for the better or they change to reflect new understanding.
@cardinalfang - exactly which part of the complaint are you referring to when you say the ‘alleged perjury is nowhere to be found?’ I agree that his complaint will not have her side of the story.
numbersfan, having looked at it again, I now see that the complaint is not organized the way I originally thought it was organized. The complaint says that she agrees that she perjured herself. If I asked her, would she agree she perjured herself? That’s why I’m skeptical of the complaint. He’s saying that it’s not disputed that the sex in question was consensual. But the very existence of the complaint indicates that it IS disputed.