Litigation

Attorneys from the firm's litigation department regularly appear in both state and federal courts representing higher education institutions at hearings, motions, trials, and appeals in a variety of controversies. Its attorneys are experienced in virtually all legal areas, including antitrust, civil rights, commercial, construction, employment discrimination and personal injury.

With respect to colleges and universities, we have:

• Peacefully cleared both Syracuse University administration building and Carpenter Hall at Cornell University of mass student demonstrations, utilizing temporary restraining order and innovative civil contempt of court citations.
• Secured summary judgment for Cornell in an action by Nigerian student dismissed on academic grounds on eve of graduation, marking the early high-water mark of "academic abstention" doctrine.
• Prepared amicus briefs for Syracuse University in the appeal of Lefkowitz v. Cornell University, reversing a lower court holding that huge wind tunnel given to Cornell had to be held in perpetual charitable trust, helping to resolve an important endowment issue regarding an institution's ability to deal with university property as corporate asset, not as trust asset.
• Secured summary judgment for university sued by plaintiff for libel by student editors of campus newspaper. Early and much-noted case insulating private institution from student libels.
• Handled litigation in connection with the New York Chiropractic College's relocation from Long Island to the former Eisenhower College campus in Upstate New York, including the successful defense of an action to enjoin relocation.
• Secured summary judgment for a private college in a suit alleging negligent hiring and supervision.
• Successfully defended a community college's board of trustees in a federal suit by a former dean alleging his termination violated the ADEA, constituted deprivation of property without due process, and was in retaliation for protected free speech, with summary judgment in favor of the college affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals.
• Successfully defended numerous requests for judicial review of student disciplinary proceedings under New York's Article 78.
• Successfully obtained summary judgment for a university in a class-action Title IX case involving claims by female student-athletes.
• Successfully resolved multi-million dollar litigation involving ownership of principal and historic appreciation of endowments held by Syracuse University in connection with its medical college transferred to State University of New York.
• Successfully affirmed private university's right to enforce parking regulations and fines at the appellate level.
• Secured national landmark holding, by New York State's highest court, that a medical college can practice medicine (through faculty practice plan) over objections of unlicensed corporate practice of medicine" and "fee splitting."
• Obtained and preserved on appeal a landmark judgment rejecting claims by suspended students that an otherwise private college disciplinary decision was state action for purposes of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the Fourteenth Amendment because the college had adopted disciplinary rules for the maintenance of public order on campus, as required by N.Y. Educ. Law § 6450.
• Secured judgment after trial in favor of a private college in a suit by a student who was convinced to withdraw due to psychiatric problems, but who alleged that his withdrawal was coerced and constituted a deprivation of property without due process of law, and discrimination on the basis of his psychiatric handicap in violation of § 504 of the Federal Rehabilitation Act.