Law Schools

It Turns Out Law School Leaving A Paper Trail Of Retaliation Was A Poor Litigation Strategy

Law professor Paul Campos prevailed in his fight with his employer.

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Law School ConceptTechnically, law professor Paul Campos didn’t “win” his lawsuit against the University of Colorado, but he did settle for a “substantial” amount with the school agreeing to pay his legal fees. Honestly, that’s more of a win than most wins.

And thanks to the lack of a non-disclosure agreement — another resounding victory for a plaintiff in a discrimination case — Campos is opening up about the process.

In the settlement agreement, the university denies having done anything wrong, but, as always, actions speak louder than words. In addition to paying all of my legal fees from two years of litigation, the university paid me a substantial sum to not take the case to trial, removed Dean Inniss as my supervisor for whatever time may be left in her tenure as Dean, and made various other concessions regarding the conditions of my employment going forward.

Campos, the author of Don’t Go To Law School (Unless) (affiliate link), never wanted to get into a legal fight with the law school where he’s worked for over three decades. But after getting a poor annual review score that the committee refused to explain, he elevated the issue to the dean and — to quote his post from last year:

When asked by me, the committee refused to give me any explanation for the grade. The dean then continued to refuse to make any independent evaluation of the recommendation. I then indicated to her that I might need to assert my rights in a more formal way, at which point she told me she was “not afraid of litigation.”

Knowing that litigation was coming, Dean Lolita Buckner Inniss made some questionable strategic moves including kicking Campos off of a committee and writing an email to Campos explaining that she was doing it in response to his complaint. No one necessarily expects the legal academy to be experts in the practicalities, but telling the plaintiff you’re retaliating against them should probably warrant a lesson.

So should this:

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After I complained to her about this retaliation, she removed me from teaching a class because I was purportedly making racist and sexist statements in that class.  My lawyer then let the university know that the law school had complete recordings of the class in question, which we had reviewed in detail, and which no one at the law school had ever even looked at.  This pretty much put an end to that rationale, and revealed it for what it was: a libelous pretext for continuing to punish me for having reported the dean’s discrimination in the first place.

We noted last year that “we have recordings of every class” was going to present a problem for the school’s case.

In other words, the dean of the University of Colorado’s law school’s failure to adhere to the tenets of Employment Discrimination Law 101 – don’t retaliate against someone who is complaining about discrimination – put the university in a fundamentally untenable position in regard to the litigation. And now the university’s leadership has recognized that implicitly, by permanently removing Dean Inniss from her position as my supervisor. Why that leadership continues to allow Lolita Buckner Inniss to supervise my colleagues is a question that at least some of them might want to start asking in a more public way.

The next two installments breaking down this case will appear on LGM over the coming days.

How I Won My Lawsuit Against the University of Colorado [Lawyers Guns Money]

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Earlier: Law School Professor Sues School After What Sounds Like A Whole Lot Of Retaliation

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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