Clark Atlanta faces multi-million dollar lawsuit by from former professors
Several former Clark Atlanta University professors have sued the school after they claim they were wrongfully terminated during a massive layoff.
They have won a portion of the case already but are now asking another jury to help them in recovering their losses.
“It’s been a hard journey,” stated former professor Lonzy Lewis.
“Somebody came into my office and told me to turn my computer off, to turn in my ID and leave,” Henry Neal, one of the other professors said.
In all, there are five tenured professors suing the school after an incident that has police escorting 54 faculty members off of the property on February 6, 2009.
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“They said if you don’t leave, we will shackle, we will you handcuff you and we will put you in a paddy wagon. They said if you come here without special permission, we will put you in jail and by the way, you are banned from the university for life,” stated Johnny Wilson.
The school claimed that they were engulfed in an “enrollment emergency” at the time. The professors sued back in 2013 for breach of a tenured contract. They won.
However, “The court made an error in limiting the damage to professors to one year and we appealed that,” according to attorney Mitchell Benjamin with Delong, Caldwell, Bridges and Fitzpatrick Attorney at Law.
They have won their appeal and now the case goes back to trial.
“The jury’s sole role will be to determine the amount of fully compensatory damages,” Benjamin stated.
Most of the professors were making anywhere from $40,000 to $48,000 per year with one of them making over $66,000. When this is multiplied by the seven years since the incident, it comes to almost half a million dollars. That means the University could be paying out millions.
According to Clark Atlanta, “CAU has a policy of not commenting on pending legal matters. Because this case remains in litigation, we are not able to comment at this time.”
