Law Professors, Law Schools

Worst Law School Ever Is Now Suing Its Professors

This law school gets slapped with another lawsuit just as it goes on the offensive against the first round of professors who filed suit.

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The travails of Charleston School of Law continue. After firing a gaggle of professors who all conveniently pointed out to the public how poorly run the school is, the school found itself on the wrong end of a pair of lawsuits from recently dismissed professors Allyson Stuart[1] and Nancy Zisk alleging that the school fired them in retaliation.

Now Charleston Law is striking back with counterclaims against Stuart (available here) and Zisk (available here).

The Charleston Regional Business Journal reports:

The counterclaim documents say Zisk and Stuart, along with others, conspired to “injure the defendants by openly opposing and intentionally thwarting” the school’s transfer of ownership. Both professors signed a column against the sale that was published in The Post and Courierin May.

The “conspiracy” inflicted “special damage” on the defendants, the documents say, and “robbed defendants of the only opportunity known” to transfer ownership of the school.

The school claims, via court records, that Zisk and Stuart breached their duties of loyalty by signing the column and soliciting other school employees to sign it. They also prepared and printed the column on the school’s official letterhead using the school’s computers, printers and other electronic devices, the documents say.

“An employee has a duty to abide by his employer’s instructions and policies and owes a duty of loyalty to his employer to carry out those instructions and policies,” a counterclaim document says. “It is implicit in any contract for employment that the employee shall remain faithful to the employer’s interests” throughout the term of employment.

Of course. The fact that the regulators were hot to scuttle the deal wasn’t a contributing factor at all.

And Charleston and its owners Robert Carr and George Kosko got more bad news this week as a pair of current CSOL employees have sued the school, claiming that Carr and Kosko “intentionally, willfully, maliciously, and/or recklessly began a campaign of fear and intimidation with the faculty in hopes of pressuring the faculty into supporting the sale and transfer to InfiLaw,” and said the owners held meetings to “threaten the faculty into supporting the InfiLaw transaction” (complaint available here). Seems to be a popular sentiment these days.

Amanda Compton was hired by the school as a tenure-track faculty member in August 2010, and Jonathan Marcantel joined the faculty in August 2011, the lawsuit says. In December 2014, both applied for tenure and received approval from Dean Andy Abrams to have tenure status voted on by the board of directors.

However, then-President Joseph Harbaugh told Compton in July that she “should not push the tenure question, as the board was ‘angry’ and looking for a reason to deny tenure applications,” the lawsuit says.

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You might remember Charleston’s short-termed president Joseph Harbaugh, who joined the school to provide independent insight and management despite serving on Infilaw’s National Policy Board. It turns out he might have suffered from a nasty case of brutal honesty — which doesn’t seem to serve one well at CSOL — if he’s telling professors that the board was trying to hamstring tenure applications. Soon after this alleged conversation, the board announced a new policy tolling tenure applications on the whims of Carr and Kosko, a move that Compton and Marcentel think runs afoul of their employment agreements.

So now Charleston is facing three suits from four current or former faculty members while desperately trying to convince anyone, anywhere that the school that so greatly enriched Carr and Kosko is a hopelessly hobbled entity that needed Infilaw to save it before those pesky professors got in the way with their “educational concerns.”

I mean, the nerve! How dare they impugn Infilaw’s academic prowess with their “words” and “opinions” when we have concrete test results that can do it for us.

Law school files counterclaims against professors [Charleston Regional Business Journal]
Fired professors sue Charleston School of Law [South Carolina Lawyers Weekly]

Earlier: Law School Sued After Firing Tenured Professors
The Absolute Worst Way To Run A Law School
Charleston Faculty Pen Blistering Indictment Of Management
Charleston’s New President — You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me
Despite All Efforts, Law School Posts Worst Bar Exam Performance Ever
Charleston Law Begs Students To Stay With Dumbest Pitch Ever
Law School Cuts Graduation Events To Protect Profits
Leaked Video Of Charleston Law Board — CSOL Is S.O.L.
Charleston President Quits After Only 8 Days
Charleston Faculty Pen Blistering Indictment Of Management
School Threatens To Call Security When Dean Candidate Suggests It’s A Crappy Law School
I Bet You Thought Going To Charleston Law Was Already Rock Bottom

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[1] Disclosure: Again, I worked with Professor Stuart at Cleary.

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