The lawsuit of a University of Wyoming dean who was demoted after refusing to channel money into a portion of the school he believed was not legally entitled to it survived a court hearing Tuesday, while UW asked a judge to throw it out.
UW called the lawsuit invalid in part because the plaintiff and former dean Cameron Wright did not vet his complaint with the university’s human resources department or with an audit department before filing his lawsuit.
Wright did make other attempts to inform UW leadership and reconcile the issue, his attorney Mary Elizabeth Galvan countered.
The Controversy
Wright was demoted this spring from his deanship at UW's College of Engineering and Physical Sciences following a vote of the UW Board of Trustees.
UW said it demoted Wright because he lacked a cogent plan to use state money to elevate the CEPS to nationally recognized levels of excellence.
Wright countered in his lawsuit thatthe demotion was “solely in retaliation” for his refusal to use state money earmarked for the engineering college to support a spinoff computing school that UW President Ed Seidel’s romantic partner Dr. Gabrielle Allen was running.
“On information and belief,” says Wright’s complaint, it was "at Dr. Seidel’s insistence, the University of Wyoming Board of Trustees removed Plaintiff as Dean of the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences.”
The Hearing
After a hearing that lasted more than an hour Tuesday in which she discussed the case and relevant law with Galvan and UW’s attorney KayLynn Bestol, Albany County District Court Judge Misha Westby declined to dismiss it.
But, Westby indicated, UW’s assertion that Wright didn’t exhaust his administrative remedies as state law requires for an action under a state whistleblower law — the State Government Fraud Reduction Act — could prove relevant at a later phase in the case.
Galvan’s argument was that UW’s asserted “remedies” were posed as optional rather than required; and that the school didn’t hold out those remedies as pertaining to the Government Fraud Reduction Act.
Bestol’s argument, conversely, was that these remedies were accessible and available, and that state law is clear that Wright should have exhausted them before involving a court of law.
Even if they may be called optional, the portion of the law requiring people to exhaust them makes them mandatory for the purposes of launching a lawsuit, she added.
Westby didn’t have enough evidence to take either side, she said, so she chose to keep the case alive for now.
“If the remedies that are being alleged by the University of Wyoming have not been provided to the plaintiff, as an employee, as part of this process as required (by law) … then I think there’s no administrative remedy to exhaust,” she said. “If on the other hand, that is the case and there are appropriate administrative remedies, then the plaintiff must exhaust those.”
This may be a question to solve on “summary judgment,” a later phase in the civil lawsuit process, the judge added.
Trustees, Too
Wright's lawsuit also accuses UW trustees who sought to explain his demotion of “publicly disseminat(ing) otherwise confidential information falsely denigrating his performance as Dean.”
The outcry was significant, and detractors said what Wright’s lawsuit now alleges that Seidel pushed for Wright’s demotion because Wright refused to shift $500,000 marked annually for CEPS into the new computing school.
The lawsuit, however, doesn’t give the dollar amount.
It accuses UW of breaking a state law that forbids state employers from penalizing employees who notify their employers "in good faith" of law or policy violations.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
