Comments on: Pettifoggery, or sweet, sweet revenge?

By: Schadenfreudelicious! Baylor Prez canned Thursday : Historiann : History and sexual politics, 1492 to the present

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:21:43 +0000

[...] years as president of the University of Nevada at Reno.” Hmmm…remember all of those lawsuits by current and former staff and faculty at at UNR I told you about a few weeks ago? Well, let’s hope he stays good and retired as of [...]

By: Historiann

Historiann — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:38:44 +0000

That might be even more depressing, Mary–you’d spend all day long dealing with what happens when people are bullied, and the odds are so stacked in favor of corporations and institutions and against the individual that you might find academia a refuge. I’m just sayin’.

You *might* get a good job and decent students, like Historiann! (Well, eventually anyway.)

By: mary

mary — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:56:23 +0000

All this talk of bullying in the workplace makes me want to abandon Phd plans in favor of a career in employment law!

By: Historiann

Historiann — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:45:12 +0000

Right on. When I consulted an attorney here in Fort Fun, where my institution Baa Ram U. is located, there were only one or two guys who had experience with employment law and BRU.

In an odd coincidence, the individual whose behavior caused me to seek counsel in Fort Fun is now in the administration at U. Nevada, Reno! Small world, ain’t it? (Fortunately, everything worked out just fine without attorneys, etc.)

By: Indyanna

Indyanna — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:28:21 +0000

If the game is on the line, you want your closer in there, right, not Somebody, Esq., who happens to come up on some rotation list? In any small jurisdiction with a dominant institution (typical of many university towns), there’s probably not a wide range of counsel willing to take on the local top predator, so whoever works that vein will get most of the business. Attacks on the plaintiff’s bar are probably as much pro forma today as predictable motions to dismiss the complaint. As for the “disgruntled former employee” gambit, I’ve always thought that one is a riot. To test the thesis you’d have to compare such suits with a random sample of lawsuits filed against the same defendant by well-gruntled, highly gratified, former employees. And what lawyer is going to take a case from somebody who comes to the office wearing a UNR sweatshirt or who names his/her kids after the Mighty Pioneers, or whatever they’re called? Institutional management teams do tend to get in trouble when it’s revealed (often through freedom of information or state right to know inquiries) that they’ve been paying plaintiffs to go away. Such knowledge might well attract some meritless complaints, but that’s just more discredit to the managers, right?