Quixotic Irvine
Valley College Legal Battle is Over—For Now
From Community College Week, May 1, 2000
By Scott W. Wright
IRVINE, Calif.—The
embattled president of Irvine Valley College has lost the final round of a
legal campaign to muzzle his chief critic, part of a bizarre courtroom battle
in which he accused the president of another college of conspiring against him.
Superior Court Judge David McEachen
in late March tossed out an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit filed earlier this year
by Dr. Raghu P. Mathur, the president of Irvine Valley College whose tenure as
CEO has been marred by one controversy after another.
Mathur alleged in the lawsuit that a
former Irvine Valley administrator illegally obtained confidential documents
about him from his personnel file and then leaked them to a professor who
publishes newsletters that frequently lampoon Mathur.
But the judge sided with former
Irvine Valley Vice President of Instruction Terrence J. Burgess, noting during
a court hearing in March that Mathur presented no evidence and that allowing
the lawsuit to proceed would violate a state law against stifling free speech.
“It was pretty cut-and-dried,” said
Burgess, now the president of Chabot College in Hayward, Calif. “The court
ruled that Mathur didn’t have a shred of evidence. He didn’t offer a single
piece of evidence to show that I had done what I was alleged to have done. And
of course courts want to see evidence.”
McEachen was the second judge to
rule against Mathur in as many months. Superior Court Judge Michael Brenn[er]
earlier dismissed claims against Roy Bauer, a tenured philosophy professor who
has taught at Irvine Valley since 1986 and the publisher of the scathing
newsletters, Dissent and The Vine.
“This was outrageous, a huge
affront,” said Burgess, who spent most of his career at Irvine Valley but left
two years ago to serve as the president of Chabot. “These were just wild
allegations. This guy is a pathological character. He’s just a flat-out liar.
“My initial reaction to the suit was
that I was astonished because these allegations were absolutely preposterous
and wholly unfounded,” he adds. “The dastardly deed I was accused of having
committed is an action that actually would have been impossible.”
Neither Mathur nor his attorney,
Michael Corfield of Laguna Beach, could be reached for comment. But Corfield
told a local newspaper here that Mathur “probably” would appeal the court’s
decision. Appealing, however, could significantly raise his legal costs.
Under the law cited by both judges
in dismissing the case, the losing side must pay all legal expenses. Burgess
estimates the cost to defend himself against the lawsuit ran about $25,000;
Bauer has said he has spent about $22,000 on the case.
Mathur’s lawsuit stemmed from an
item published in Bauer’s Dissent, a districtwide newsletter. The article
stated that before he ascended to the president’s post, Mathur had been
disciplined by the college for allegedly violating a student’s privacy.
The newsletter alleged that Mathur
distributed copies of the student’s transcripts in an attempt to discredit
Burgess and had asked the college’s faculty senate to censure him.
Bauer has refused to reveal how he
obtained the damaging records regarding Mathur, telling Community College Week:
“You know how a college is. Documents tend to float around. I got them. The
charge that they were somehow stolen is just absurd.”
In his lawsuit filed in January,
Mathur contends that Burgess had friends pull the confidential memos from his
personnel file and that Burgess then gave them to Bauer to publish.
However, Burgess contends it is
inconceivable that he could have leaked documents to Bauer because those files
are maintained at the district’s headquarters, not at the college where Burgess
might have access to them.
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| Mathur: "leadership is key" |
“Roy Bauer has been a huge critic of
Mathur now for three years, publishing these two newsletters,” Burgess said.
“The one thing that Mathur values is his sense of how other perceive him. He
has an ego bigger than the planet.
“He has wanted to shut Roy Bauer
down forever and is looking for any means whatsoever to do so,” he adds. “I
believe that Mathur thought he could just sue him and that would accomplish his
goal of silencing Mr. Bauer.”
In a 1998 newsletter, Bauer named a
list of people he disliked. The list contained so many names that he likened it
to a “two-ton slate of polished granite which I hope someday to drop on Raghu
Mathur’s head.”
Bauer wrote in another issue of the
newsletter that he had fantasized about attending a funeral for a college
district trustee during which Mathur and several other officials were
“dispatched by a lurid gas emanating from the Great Man’s gaping mouth.”
South Orange officials tried to
reprimand Bauer for creating a hostile work environment but when the professor
sued, a judge chided administrators for attempting to stifle Bauer’s First
Amendment protected free-speech rights. The district has appealed.
Mathur rarely comments publicly on
the controversies. But last year he told the Orange County Register newspaper
that such political commentary made him afraid for his life.
He also said he has received death
threats.
“I think the threats taken as a
whole about dropping granite, maiming, killing through lurid gas or using a
gun, using a hatchet, any of those ways or some other ways I could be killed”
are serious, Mathur told the newspaper.
Judge
dismisses second Mathur suit
A superior court judge has granted a
motion to drop an invasion of privacy law suit filed by Irvine Valley College
President Raghu Mathur against a former campus administrator.
3/23/00, Irvine World News
Judge
dismisses second Mathur suit
By Laura Hayes
Mathur filed the suit in January
against Terrence Burgess, a former vice president of instruction who is now
president of Chabot College in the San Francisco Bay area. The suit claimed
that Burgess obtained confidential documents from Mathur’s personnel file and
gave them to Irvine Valley professor Roy Bauer, who published them in his
newsletter Dissent over a year ago.
Bauer reprinted a 1996 reprimand
letter to Mathur from Daniel Larios, then college president, concerning the way
Mathur had handled a student’s transcripts. Bauer also published a legal
opinion from the district’s law firm advising the chancellor that Mathur’s
conduct was in violation of federal privacy law. Mathur was chair of the
physical sciences department in 1996.
David McEachen is the second judge
to grant the special motion, based on a section of the California Code of Civil
Procedure that is intended to discourage lawsuits which attempt to chill free
speech.
In February, Judge Michael Brenner
ruled in a related case filed against Bauer that Mathur’s performance of duties
is a matter of public interest and that nothing about the published statements
appeared untrue.
“I think that Mathur has been
understandably embarrassed by Roy’s publication of the Dissent, which very
publicly discloses his activities as a public official,” said Burgess.
To the charge that he stole the
documents from Mathur’s file, Burgess said, “was an absolutely preposterous
allegation. There was no evidence that it occurred and no mechanical opportunity
for it to occur.
“He needed a vehicle to connect to
Roy, I was an opportunity. It’s time the district realizes the three years of
grief they’ve had is all pointed to one thing, Raghu Mathur.”
The motion places the burden on
Mathur to show probability that he will prevail in his complaint of invasion of
privacy. The judge ruled that the information was protected under provisions of
the first amendment. Burgess also submitted evidence that the published
documents were in the public domain in 1996 and widely known.
“It’s always a matter of public
concern how a public official does his job,” said Diana Gordon, Burgess’
attorney. “They (the public) have a right to know and it’s newsworthy.”
In addition to ridding the system of
frivolous lawsuits, a second purpose of the statute is to make sure the person
who is sued recovers litigation costs, said Gordon. Therefore, the statute does
not give the court discretion in awarding fees.
Mathur’s recourse is to appeal to
the superior court, running the risk of adding more to the total costs of the
two cases, estimated at about $30,000.Mathur offered to not appeal the motion
if Burgess agreed to cover his own court and attorney’s fees, and the offer was
declined, according to Wendy Phillips, co-counsel for Burgess.
Mathur referred phone calls about
the case to his attorney, Michael Corfield of Laguna Beach.
On Tuesday, Corfield said Mathur
“probably” would appeal the ruling, but it has not been decided.
“Essentially the judge took a law
that pertains to defamation case and applied it to an invasion of privacy
case,” said Corfield, explaining a basis on which he could appeal the ruling.
