CU is seeking to bill Ward Churchill over $52,000 to recover funds lost during the former CU professor’s wrongful termination lawsuit against CU.
CU attorney Patrick O’Rourke said that the exact amount is $52,181.71, which includes normal trial expenses and not attorney fees.
“The $52,000 is made up of all normal things that go into lawsuits,” O’Rourke said. “It includes travel expenses, parking fees and the expenses that go into preparing exhibits. The prevailing party always has the right to come in and ask for expenses to be covered.”
Churchill has been in the public spotlight since the wide circulation of his controversial essay, “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” written the day after 9/11, in which he compared World Trade Center workers to “little Eichmanns.”
Churchill was fired in 2007 by the Board of Regents, allegedly because he had committed plagiarism and academic fraud.
Churchill then sued CU, claiming that he was really fired over his controversial essays and political views.
A Colorado jury ruled that Churchill had been unlawfully fired. The jury awarded Churchill $1 in damages.
Chief Denver District Court Judge Larry Naves later denied Churchill the chance to be reinstated or compensated further by CU.
Churchill’s lawyer David Lane has said that he intends to appeal Nave’s decision.
“The law is very strict about what is reimbursable as costs and virtually none of CU’s bill is going anywhere,” Lane said in an e-mail adding that “the entire thing
is going to be held up pending appeal.”
Some CU students see the amount as too high. Mike Niland, a 24-year-old fifth year senior computer science major, said he would like to see how everything added up.
“It seems like a lot of money,” Niland said. “I don’t know enough about the law system to tell if it’s as high as it sounds but I would like to see the actual numbers.”
Contact CUIndependent Staff Writer Lindsay Mullineaux at lindsay.mullineaux@colroado.edu.
