Duke, insurer hope to settle on lacrosse case

Raleigh News and Observer ^ | October 12, 2010 | Staff

[abb]

Duke University and the insurance company it sued to recoup some of the settlement costs linked to the Duke lacrosse case hope to settle their differences within the next month.

The National Union Fire Insurance Co., an affiliate of insurance giant AIG, and Duke have been wrangling over whether the company should reimburse the university for costs tied to the confidential settlements of lawsuits with three former lacrosse players and the former lacrosse coach.

In a court document filed Friday in federal court, Duke and the company acknowledged that settlement talks had been held.

"The parties are hopeful that they will be able to resolve this dispute at the November 4 mediation and have agreed that it is preferable to avoid incurring significant expenses," the parties said.

Initially, the company said it was left in the dark and shouldn't have to pay for any of the settlement costs. It said university officials violated the contract by not telling the company about the settlement until after the fact. The university argued that it was barred from disclosing information because of the settlement's confidentiality clause.

snip

[abb]

One of the many, many lawsuits resulting from the attempted framing of the Lax players.

[abb]

ping

[TigerClaws]

Please sue Rev. Al and the LSM who tried and convicted these guys solely to ‘get whitey’ without ANY facts to back it up other than the crazy story of an emotionally disturbed ‘victim.’

Hope the lesson was learned nationally. AIDS isn’t the only reason to stay away from the ho’s.

[abb]

The most important thing that must come out of this is that the Duke U administration, the Durham PD, and the DA’s office must be made to publicly admit what they did and fully apologize.

[rrrod]

guess a public hanging is out of the question then...

[abb]

Personally, I would pay lots of money to be the one to pull the lever and spring the trap door under Nifong, Brodhead and a few others.

[rrrod]

right there with ya!

[SkyPilot]

I bet the Gang of 88 is still mostly employed there.

Every single one of these people should have been fired.

An Open Letter to the Duke Community In the spring of 2006, the Duke community was rocked by terrible news. We heard that a woman hired to perform at a party thrown by our lacrosse team had accused members of the team of raping her. Neighbors, we were told, heard racial epithets called out at the woman as she departed the party. The criminal proceedings and the media frenzy which followed are perhaps beginning to wind down. For us at Duke, the issues raised by the incident, and by our community's responses to it, are not. In April, a group of Duke faculty members published an advertisement in The Chronicle. The ad, titled "What does a Social Disaster Sound Like?" was mostly a compilation of statements made by Duke students in response to the incident and its immediate aftermath. This ad has figured in many discussions of the event and of the University's response. It has been broadly, and often intentionally, misread. We urge everyone to read the original ad, available at http://listening.nfshost.com/listening.htm. We have. Some of us were among the ad's signers. The ad has been read as a comment on the alleged rape, the team party, or the specific students accused. Worse, it has been read as rendering a judgment in the case. We understand the ad instead as a call to action on important, longstanding issues on and around our campus, an attempt to channel the attention generated by the incident to addressing these. We reject all attempts to try the case outside the courts, and stand firmly by the principle of the presumption of innocence. As a statement about campus culture, the ad deplores a "Social Disaster," as described in the student statements, which feature racism, segregation, isolation, and sexism as ongoing problems before the scandal broke, exacerbated by the heightened tensions in its immediate aftermath. The disaster is the atmosphere that allows sexism, racism, and sexual violence to be so prevalent on campus. The ad's statement that the problem "won't end with what the police say or the court decides" is as clearly true now as it was then. Whatever its conclusions, the legal process will not resolve these problems. The ad thanked "the students speaking individually and...the protesters making collective noise." We do not endorse every demonstration that took place at the time. We appreciate the efforts of those who used the attention the incident generated to raise issues of discrimination and violence. There have been public calls to the authors to retract the ad or apologize for it, as well as calls for action against them and attacks on their character. We reject all of these. We think the ad's authors were right to give voice to the students quoted, whose suffering is real. We also acknowledge the pain that has been generated by what we believe is a misperception that the authors of the ad prejudged the rape case. We stand by the claim that issues of race and sexual violence on campus are real, and we join the ad's call to all of us at Duke to do something about this. We hope that the Duke community will emerge from this tragedy as a better place for all of us to live, study, and work.

__________________________________________________________________

1. Stan Abe - Art, Art History, and Visual Studies 2. Benjamin Albers - University Writing Program 3. Anne Allison - Cultural Anthropology 4. Srinivas Aravamudan - English 5. Houston Baker - English and African & African-American Studies 6. Lee Baker - Cultural Anthropology 7. Christine Beaule - University Writing Program 8. Sarah Beckwith - English 9. Paul Berliner - Music 10. Connie Blackmore - African & African-American Studies 11. Jessica Boa - Religion & University Writing Program 12. Mary T. Boatwright - Classical Studies 13. Silvia Boero - Romance Studies 14. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva - Sociology 15. Matthew Brim - University Writing Program 16. William Chafe - History 17. Leo Ching - Asian & African Languages 18. Rom Coles - Political Science 19. Miriam Cooke - Asian & African Languages 20. Michaeline Crichlow - African & African-American Studies 21. Kim Curtis - Political Science 22. Leslie Damasceno - Romance Studies 23. Cathy Davidson - English 24. Sarah Deutsch - History 25. Ariel Dorfman - Literature & Latin American Studies 26. Laura Edwards - History 27. Grant Farred - Literature 28. Luciana Fellini - Romance Studies 29. Mary McClintock Fulkerson - Divinity School 30. Esther Gabara - Romance Studies 31. Raymond Gavins - History 32. Meg Greer - Romance Studies 33. Thavolia Glymph - History 34. Michael Hardt - Literature 35. Joseph Harris - University Writing Program 36. Karla Holloway - English 37. Bayo Holsey - African & African-American Studies 38. Mary Hovsepian - Sociology 39. Sherman James - Public Policy 40. Alice Kaplan - Literature 41. Keval Kaur Khalsa - Dance Program 42. Ranjana Khanna - English 43. Ashley King - Romance Studies 44. Claudia Koonz - History 45. Peter Lasch - Art, Art History 46. Dan A. Lee - Math 47. Pat Leighten - Art, Art History, and Visual Studies 48. Frank Lentricchia - Literature 49. Caroline Light - Institute for Critical U.S. Studies 50. Marcy Litle - Comparative Area Studies 51. Ralph Litzinger - Cultural Anthropology 52. Michele Longino - Romance Studies 53. Wahneema Lubiano-African & African-American Studies and Lit 54. Kenneth Maffitt - History 55. Jason Mahn - University Writing Program 56. Anne-Maria Makhulu - African & African-American Studies 57. Lisa Mason - Surgical Unit-2100 58. Paula McClain - Political Science 59. Louise Meintjes - Music 60. Walter Mignolo - Literature and Romance Studies 61. Alberto Moreiras - Romance Studies 62. Mark Anthony Neal - African & African-American Studies 63. Diane Nelson - Cultural Anthropology 64. Jolie Olcott - History 65. Liliana Parades - Romance Studies 66. Charles Payne - African & African-American Studies and History 67. Charlotte Pierce-Baker - Women's Studies 68. Wilma Pebles-Wilkins 69. Arlie Petters - Math 70. Ronen Plesser - Physics 71. Jan Radway - Literature 72. Tom Rankin - Center for Documentary Studies 73. Marcia Rego - University Writing Program 74. Deborah S. Reisinger - Romance Studies 75. Alex Rosenberg - Philosophy 76. Kathy Rudy - Women's Studies 77. Marc Schachter - English 78. Laurie Shannon - English 79. Pete Sigal - History 80. Irene Silverblatt - Cultural Anthropology 81. Fiona Somerset - English 82. Rebecca Stein - Cultural Anthropology 83. Susan Thorne - History 84. Antonio Viego - Literature 85. Teresa Vilaros - Romance Studies 86. Priscilla Wald - English 87. Maurice Wallace - English and African & African-American Studies 88. David Wong - Philosophy

[abb]

Houston Baker is gone. He’s at Vanderbilt now.
http://sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/site/iGxZW8

[abb]

From KC Johnson's blog.

http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/

[paudio]

If I were rich, I’d put an ad in Durham’s local newspaper asking and NC large media showing which professors that students should avoid.

[rawhide]

Has CNN's Nancy Grace ever apologized publicly or is she still on the side of the accuser?

[Venturer]

The professor’s are still there, nothing has changed.

[nikos1121]

The insurance company should have been in charge of the settlement. They were insuring the college under the libel suit filed. So if the University goes off half cocked and settles on their own terms, why should the insurance company pay?

Plus, I’m wondering if there was a law suit filed by the coach? As part of his benefits I’m sure the school provided him liabiity insurance for any lawsuits that would arise from his coaching etc.

If there were law suits filed against school because of the coach, e.g. from the girl, or others like Jessie Jackson’s group etc., the school would be obliged to defend him. If he had hire an attorney because the school was not going to do this, then in essence the school was suing themselves.

[nonliberal]

Duke can burn to the ground for all I care. And “Coach K” can burn with it.

[FreedomPoster]

>>Initially, the company said it was left in the dark and shouldn’t have to pay for any of the settlement costs. It said university officials violated the contract by not telling the company about the settlement until after the fact.

I really, really hope Duke ended up eating the settlement out of their endowment due to this, and that this insurer doesn’t have to pay squat.

There is no way you should expect to make a claim in an area like this without getting the insurer involved in the process. Anyone with the least bit of understanding about how insurance really works realizes this.

[FreedomPoster]

I lost all respect for Coach K, which had been considerable, due to this case.

[Canedawg]

“The insurance company should have been in charge of the settlement. They were insuring the college under the libel suit filed. So if the University goes off half cocked and settles on their own terms, why should the insurance company pay?”
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I agree. I went to the article before i posted to see if there were any other illuminating facts there, but there weren’t.

Dook fooked up by settling without allowing its insurer to cross the T’s and dot the I’s. The settlement wasnt confidential UNTIL Dook entered into the agreement. They could have and should have run this by their insurer beforehand.

[FreedomPoster]

HA! Are you kidding?

I’m sure you’ve seen it, but this is such a great summary of Nancy’s part in this story it needs to be linked again.

The Daily Show College Lacrosse Report
(Jon Stewart on Nancy Grace)
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-april-12-2007/duke—non—rape-case

[FreedomPoster]

Oh, and just noticed your tagline. Love it.