Yesterday afternoon’s “Breaking News” alert from The Legal Intelligencer was certainly intriguing:

Suit Sparked by Prof’s Affair With Student Survives

A former University of Pittsburgh professor who engaged in an affair with a research assistant can continue with his defamation case against the assistant over claims she affected his ability to get another teaching job and sent a picture of his penis to his wife and 37 associates.

I can’t say that I’m particularly interested in university gossip, but this headline piqued my interest in the relationship between the civil justice system and university life — see, e.g., my posts on the scandalous efforts by fraternities to avoid lawsuits, on the misguided doctrine of “academic abstention,” and on universities trying to avoid anti-discrimination law — and I’ve represented both plaintiffs and defendants in lawsuits arising from tortious conduct at universities.Thus, after reading the story in the Legal, I had to pull the Western District of Pennsylvania’s Order and the Complaint in Wang v. Lee.

In many ways, a close inspection of the case makes it less interesting than it seems it would be. There are a variety of salacious allegations, and one party’s oddly specific wish to be reborn as a mermaid, but those details are mere gossip in a situation that seems to have had rather severe consequences personally and professionally for all involved. The court’s opinion denying summary judgment — thus allowing the professor’s defamation lawsuit against the grad student to go forward– is rather humdrum from a legal perspective; most of the claims are plainly sound if the facts alleged are proven, like Invasion of Privacy (largely for the picture), Wrongful Use of Civil Proceedings (for filing an allegedly frivolous protection from abuse petition in Washington State), and Defamation (for suggesting in the email that the professor was threatening her). I have my doubts about the viability of a negligence claim in the midst of a romantic disputes, but that’s an issue for another day.

Nonetheless, two issues jumped out at me. 
Continue Reading The Professor And The Grad Student (A Civil Litigation Story)