New Orleans Saints LB Jon Vilma's lawsuit assigned in federal court
James Varney, The Times-Picayune
Saints linebacker Jonathan Vilma's federal libel and slander lawsuit against NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has been assigned to Judge Ginger Berrigan. Berrigan, a Clinton appointee, has served on the bench in the Eastern District Court of Louisiana since her confirmation in 1994.
As of court closing Friday, there does not appear to have been any motion filed yet by the NFL in response to the lawsuit.
Wow, just wow. This guy was done in by Tulane for sure. I am very disturbed by this for reasons that I'll go into in a [WARNING] lengthy way.
First of all, of course, she shouId have recused herself. At least, it appears so from the sources he cites. He does not mention whether or not her travel and living expenses to Thessaloniki in addition to the $5500. That would make it worse. Edit: I think he said that the $5500 was in addition to her salary--again, wow.
An adjunct professor is usually a specialist, as is certainly the case here, or a part-time instructor who has an area of expertise that is needed by a few students: too few to justify a full-time hire. They are found on campus only when they teach unless they choose to become more involved. You can't require them to do anything except teach their course(s). The level of their commitment is really up to them. I did this for one semester--and believe me, I came, I taught, I left. So, her connection to Tulane would appear to be not very strong--and we don't know how often she taught. HOWEVER, we know that Tulane paid her to teach in Greece. That stengthens the connection a lot in my view.
Of course, attorneys who practice before her are going to be reluctant to cross her. And judges will think twice before reversing other judges. This is a systemic problem, upon which our forum attorneys may care to comment.
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Let me go back to the Tulane situation because most on this board may not understand what happened. I'm not a scientist, but I have seen this kind of thing happen in at least one instance. I'd like to know what was going on with the new Chair. I would hope that he was fired by the Dean and sent back to the classroom or out the door. Or, it could be that he was brought in from the outside--and sometimes, outside Chairs are hired essentially to fire people. I won't go into how comtemptible that is. This guy on the video doesn't seem like "deadwood" to me but rather that he was continuing his research and bringing in grant money. Why Tulane did not disburse the money is completely mysterious to me. I am incredibly interested in what happened--but others reading this may be yawning.
Scientists in universities must maintain grants to justify equipment purchases, labs, and grad assistants. This guy, presumably tenured (I think he said "senior professors," code for tenured professors.) seemed to do that. You have to understand that tenured professors have no mandatory retirement age. If you're a Chair, there is essentially nothing you can do to force retirement if you have an older, tenured professor who isn't doing the job. Fortunately, as a Chair, I have only come close to having to deal with a situation like that--but the person did retire.
I'd like to see both sides of this, but I have seen a case where a new Chair came in and tried to get senior professors to retire. In another instance, a scientist was denied lab space by a Chair, and that Chair was eventually removed by the Dean. Whether that was cause-and-effect or not, I'm not sure. And again, I'd like to see both sides.
I think the problem largely stems from envy. Often, Chairs from science departments are too busy with bureaucratic matters to maintain their grants.
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[End of university politics section]
I do not know the details of Berrigan's ruling, but it could have been simply that courts do not want to get involved with university personnel decisions and matters of university policy. It's not dissimilar to their stance on the NFL, which has its own set of regulations. I have seen one successful suit of a university, but that was over salary, not personnel. By the way, none of these actions described above involved Tulane.
Fortunately, Vilma's case has nothing to do with this, and there's no reason we know of that Berrigan should be disqualified. Let's hope she's not a Cowboys fan.
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Pigs have flown. Hell has frozen over. Rickey Jackson and William Roaf made the Hall of Fame. The Saints have won the Superbowl.
The TU School of Medicine now has a Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, described as "newly organized." And there is a message from the "New Chair." (So, what happened to the Chair this guy was complaining about?) It may be that the three senior professors did not fit well within the newly organized department. One way of firing a tenured professor is to discontinue the program in which he/she is teaching. I have seen that kind of thing happen as well, and very recently. I realize that this case happened quite long ago, but it's possible that reorganization was beginning to take place. It might have been an earlier stage of the reorganization. For sure, Tulane underwent a lot of turmoil after Katrina, and I know that some programs were eliminated.
Here's another angle. Law Schools like to have judges teach courses. Tulane (or Loyola or LSU or Southern) would not want to exclude them for fear of them having to hear a case involving the university. Nonetheless, it seems reasonable to me that she should have recused herself in this instance. And again, I don't see any problem with her hearing Vilma's suit--but who knows?
What Tulane did to this guy is disgusting in my view. Even if the program is discontinued, you shouldn't take away his disability insurance. Instead, Tulane should have helped him in any way they could to find another job. I don't care if the guy was a royal pain. I wonder how much grant money he brought in over the years and what Tulane realized as indirect cost recovery (translated: dollars for equipment and overhead).
BTW, nice catch, parlorcitysaint! We upstaters have to stick together.
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Pigs have flown. Hell has frozen over. Rickey Jackson and William Roaf made the Hall of Fame. The Saints have won the Superbowl.
Ginger Berrigan is a good Judge. Do not take what some disgruntled guy says as proof. I have been in front of at least once representing an insurance company and she wasn't so friendly to my client. All cases are different and everyone on the short end of the stick thinks the Judge was screwing them or was biased.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JGunn
. . . I don't like you, lets just leave it at that.
Ginger Berrigan is a good Judge. Do not take what some disgruntled guy says as proof. I have been in front of at least once representing an insurance company and she wasn't so friendly to my client. All cases are different and everyone on the short end of the stick thinks the Judge was screwing them or was biased.
Agree - she has her tendencies (they all do) but overall I think she's as respected as most federal judges are and should be.
For recusal, there's basically two kinds: the first is basically required recusal, such as when the judge (or family) has a direct financial interest with one of the parties, or perhaps the judge worked on the case before coming to the bench. The second is really more permissive recusal - if the judge has some relationship or interest that she believes will impair her objectivity, she should voluntarily recuse herself. But the decision is largely left to the individual judge.
I don't think that being an adjunct professor at Tulane Law School (which I believe may even be financially independent from the university) or even sitting on some kind of advisory board for a particular program or institution affiliated with the school gives rise to a required recusal. Of course, complete disclosure should always occur, but a judge's objectivity is supposed to be her stock in trade. It's really hard to think that a federal judge is going to deprive a litigant of their right to a fair civil proceeding because she teaches a class at the school or sits on an advisory board.
I don't see any record of admonition from the judiciary or anything like that, and the case holdings were affirmed and cert. denied.
(And I think Widge's remark about her not being friendly to the insurance company is in response to the article that says she's never met an insurance company she didn't like. I have also only had one case in front of her, and while I wasn't representing an insurer, we were definitely the corporate party in the case - and she hit us pretty good with her verdict.)
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