Firm is Hired!! HA - USM Forum -- Message Board

Date: Dec 17, 2004

Firm is Hired!! HA

Date: Dec 17, 2004

For whatever it's worth, I am impressed by the tenacity with which the HA is finally covering the story at USM. Kudos to Kevin Walters; apparently a real reporter is now on the job.

Date: Dec 17, 2004

The "American" article says that 40 cases involving USM are pending or in process in local courts. How many is this, comparatively? A lot? About average? Low?

Date: Dec 17, 2004

For an orgainzation that has over 1000 employees, and has regular dealing with thousands and thousands of people (students, alumni, people on campus for different events, sports, arts, ect), I would not say that is an unusually large number.

While some of the case we know have merit, in our legal system today, about 30% of all lawsuits filed are frivolous.

Date: Dec 18, 2004

Seeker,

Not going to argue with you about frivolous lawsuits. Our legal system encourages them.

But... Clemson University has more faculty than USM (850 to 900, instead of 500 to 550). The last time I looked it up CU had 3800 employees total.

Yet...no way is Clemson involved in 40 lawsuits. A rough estimate would be 10--and that could be too high. This despite the fact that Clemson's administration has been known to violate the Faculty Manual--and, until very recently, when the long-time University attorney was pushed into retirement, CU's in-house legal staff wasn't very good.

Sorry--if USM is embroiled in 40 lawsuits, you can award the credit to Shelby Thames.

Robert Campbell

Date: Dec 18, 2004

not all of the lawsuits can be attributed to Thames. Three plaintiffs were a former women's soccer coach and his assistants. This happened under Fleming.

Date: Dec 18, 2004

I recall that this was mentioned at the PUC meeting when the AA/EEO office was being discussed. There were 38 suits going back ten years. The suit that was settled this fall was the one ten years old. The data presented showed that when the AA/EEO person was hired there was a jump in number suits and then a gradual decline. SFT wanted more legal council to help resolve the suits because the insurance premiums were based on outstanding suits and running over a million a year. He also wanted to move AA/EEO into Human Resources and do away with the stand alone office. For once he let the Faculty Senate decide the issue. (I was impressed by his "shared governance" style.) NOT!!

Date: Dec 18, 2004

keep in mind there maybe many more actions in the works against usm, simply because of the delay in filing for whatever reason. many times it takes a plantiff a year to decide to take action then the lawyers involved exchange info, etc,etc

i would guess the university is aware of many possible suits so they are preparing for the season. i would guess these foi request is what is really bothering the legal department, not due to the time involved, but trying to figure out what the requests are leading to and avoiding implicating the university inadverantly.