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Apr 28, 2024 17:13
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- Kalli
- Jun 2, 2001
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Mike McQueary won his whistleblower case against Penn State.
He was already owed $7m, and the Judge added $5m in damages.
quote:Judge Thomas Gavin's order assesses $4,974,000 in additional damages, bringing the total award in the case to more than $12.3 million after counsel fees are factored in.
Gavin found that McQueary had shown he was treated differently from other PSU employees after it became publicly known that he was a witness against Penn State administrators in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse case.
Penn State, the judge ruled, did not make its case that that different treatment pertained solely to the unique world of big-time college football.
How was McQueary treated differently?
Gavin found several reasons, starting from the announcement of charges against then-Athletic Director Tim Curley and Senior Vice President Gary Schultz:
* Then PSU-President Graham Spanier immediately issued a statement in defense of Curley and Schultz, who were charged with perjury and failing to take McQueary's eyewitness account of a shower room assault to police or child welfare authorities.
No such statement of support was ever made on behalf of McQueary.
* When McQueary was put on administrative leave for the remainder of the football season, he lost all access to the PSU football offices and facilities. In December 2011, he was asked to clean out his office.
Those were, Gavin found, evidence of de facto termination.
* Unlike other Paterno assistants, he was not put on the list for courtesy interviews by incoming head football coach Bill O'Brien in January 2012.
* Gavin found Athletic Director Dave Joyner was not credible when he refused to renew McQueary's contract - he was still formally on leave - in the spring of 2012 because "there was no work for him."
Gavin noted that McQueary had received sterling work reviews to that point, and that there were other non-coaching positions in the athletic department that he could have filled.
Judge Thomas Gavin's order assesses $4,974,000 in additional damages, bringing the total award in the case to more than $12.3 million after counsel fees are factored in.
Gavin found that McQueary had shown he was treated differently from other PSU employees after it became publicly known that he was a witness against Penn State administrators in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse case.
Penn State, the judge ruled, did not make its case that that different treatment pertained solely to the unique world of big-time college football.
How was McQueary treated differently?
In his ruling Wednesday, Judge Thomas Gavin ordered Penn State University to pay former assistant coach Mike McQueary $5 million in additional damages after finding in favor of McQueary in a whistleblower action against the university.
Gavin found several reasons, starting from the announcement of charges against then-Athletic Director Tim Curley and Senior Vice President Gary Schultz:
* Then PSU-President Graham Spanier immediately issued a statement in defense of Curley and Schultz, who were charged with perjury and failing to take McQueary's eyewitness account of a shower room assault to police or child welfare authorities.
No such statement of support was ever made on behalf of McQueary.
* When McQueary was put on administrative leave for the remainder of the football season, he lost all access to the PSU football offices and facilities. In December 2011, he was asked to clean out his office.
Those were, Gavin found, evidence of de facto termination.
* Unlike other Paterno assistants, he was not put on the list for courtesy interviews by incoming head football coach Bill O'Brien in January 2012.
* Gavin found Athletic Director Dave Joyner was not credible when he refused to renew McQueary's contract - he was still formally on leave - in the spring of 2012 because "there was no work for him."
Gavin noted that McQueary had received sterling work reviews to that point, and that there were other non-coaching positions in the athletic department that he could have filled.
Penn State must pay McQueary another $5 million: Read the judge's order
Penn State must pay McQueary another $5 million: Read the judge's order
Judge Thomas Gavin Wednesday ordered Penn State to pay almost $5 million to former assistant football coach Mike McQueary for
Joyner, the judge wrote, "simply chose to ignore the facts to arrive at the desired outcome."
As for Penn State's defense that assistant football coaches generally don't survive a change at the top, Gavin found that while true, that argument was irrelevent in McQueary's case.
That's because no one at Penn State, from head coach Joe Paterno on down, was likely to be fired in the midst of an 8-1 season.
"On Nov. 4, there was no need for 'new blood,'" Gavin wrote. "However on Nov. 5 (the date that the Sandusky presentment was publicly released), 'blood' was needed, and people had to go to satisfy the public outcry.
"The objective evidence is that Mr. McQueary would not have been removed from his coaching position but for his involvement in the "Sandusky matter" once it became public knowledge," Gavin continued.
"I conclude... that Mr. McQueary's career in football is over not because of his lack of a network (in the field) but because of the cloud over his involvement in the Sandusky matter. A cloud created and reinforced by Penn State's public actions taken against him which made him persona non grata in the football world."
In assessing damages, Gavin assessed $3,974,000 against Penn State based on the wages McQueary has sacrificed by losing a likely career as an assistant at a top-flight Division I program.
There is a separate $1 million award for non-economic damages.
Gavin assessed that award to compensate McQueary for public humiliation and damage to reputation that he suffered, in part because no one at Penn State ever acknowledged that McQueary's fully complied with all reporting requirements at the time.
Gavin seemed particularly struck by McQueary's emotional testimony about his post-scandal job search, including that he didn't even get a call back when he applied for a floor job at a State College Rite Aid.
In his testimony, McQueary stated:
"I didn't handle this quote unquote situation perfectly, but I did a darn good thing. All right. I testified in that courtroom right there. I stood up and I did it, and I can't get a job at Rite Aid, working a cash register?...
"I mean, that's humiiating. That's humbling. I'm biased. I know it. I get it. (But) That's not fair. It wasn't me who did it (committed sex crimes against children). All right? It wasn't."
Here, again, the judge took the university to task for never standing up for McQueary:
"A reasonable inference arising from Penn State's failure to correct the misinformation (about McQueary's action) is that if it did so, it would have had to explain why it had not referred the information to its or any other police agency."
The final pieces of the damage decision include a bonus payment for McQueary for Penn State's end-of-season appearance in the 2012 Ticket City Bowl - which all other Paterno-era coaches received - and the assignment of certain counsel fees to Penn State.
Gavin's award follows a Centre County's jury's Oct. 27 award of $7.3 million in damages to McQueary on separate counts of defamation and legal misrepresentation.
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Dec 1, 2016 00:49
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May 8, 2016 20:04
