LAWSUIT: Not Surprising That Dartmouth Denied Claims Made by Wrongfully Expelled Male
Amid a nationwide increase in cases challenging results of college-led sexual misconduct [trauma informed] investigations, Dartmouth responded to one of their cases challenging its own disciplinary process. On April 30, the College filed its response to a lawsuit alleging that it led an “unfair” and biased investigation resulting in the wrongful expulsion of a male student accused of sexual assault. Dartmouth has denied the claims put forth in the complaint and has demanded a trial by jury “on all claims so triable.” Dartmouth’s response pertains to the December 2018 expulsion of John Doe. In Doe’s complaint, he alleged that his expulsion stemmed from an investigation that was “influenced by a pervasive, campus-wide bias and based upon widely discredited set of inequitable and unfair procedures.” Namely, he claims that the College failed to consider that Smith (female accuser) provided “altered text messages” to the investigator, the investigation did not take into account the results of Doe’s polygraph examination and the investigative process itself “lacked basic elements of due process.” The lawsuit charged the College with a Title IX violation and breach of contract, and asked that Doe be reinstated at Dartmouth with his record expunged. Earlier Dartmouth had filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit for failure to state a claim. Judge Joseph Laplante — the federal judge presiding over the case — granted the motion to dismiss the lawsuit’s claim of a Title IX violation, but he did not dismiss the charge of breach of contract. Miltenberg said that this is typical of the cases he has worked on, adding that judges will more readily find evidence of breach of contract than discover that universities have engaged in overt gender discrimination.
Miltenberg expressed that — in line with all of his previous cases — he expects that the parties will settle out of court, emphasizing the financial and emotional burdens that lawsuits of this nature place on the accused. “It’s very hard for these young people — they’re charged with something very serious, they have the weight of an institution bearing down on them and they really don’t have a lot of information about what it is they’re being charged with,” Miltenberg said.
thedartmouth-by Elizabeth Janowski
