Juror misconduct may have occurred when a panel ruled in favor of Whittier College in a long-running whistleblower lawsuit brought by a former professor who had alleged she was wrongfully fired for supporting students claiming they were sexually harassed by another teacher, the plaintiff’s attorney argued in new court papers.
On July 11, the Los Angeles Superior Court panel found that although Teresa Delfin did support one of the students during an investigation of Professor David Iyam and advocated to protect students from his alleged sexual harassment, the plaintiff’s actions were not a “substantial factor” in the college’s decision to not renew the anthropology lecturer’s contract. Iyam headed the department Delfin worked in.
On Monday, Delfin’s attorneys filed court papers with Judge Teresa A. Beaudet in advance of a Sept. 15 hearing asking for either a judgment notwithstanding the verdict or a new trial based on various factors, including the failure of some jurors to abide by the judge’s trial conduct directions. According to Delfin’s attorneys, a male juror stated during deliberations, “I wouldn’t mind letting Dr. Delfin win, but we can give her $1, just like Taylor Swift.”
In 2017, Taylor Swift was awarded a symbolic $1 in damages by a jury in a sexual assault case against a former radio DJ. That juror in Delfin’s case ultimately voted against the plaintiff because he disagreed with the amount of damages her attorney was recommending, according to court documents that included interviews of multiple jurors.
An additional juror was frustrated that his employer was requiring him to use vacation days and said he wanted deliberations to end that day, a Friday, rather than go into another week, according to Delfin’s lawyer. Her attorney also said another panel member misrepresented the legal definition of retaliation by claiming to other jurors that it must be externally reported to a newspaper to be actual retaliation, misleading other jurors and swaying their votes against the plaintiff.
Another male juror called a Chinese member of the panel a “communist” who could not be trusted due to her heritage, according to Delfin’s attorney’s pleadings.
“This chilled her participation and suppressed a pro-plaintiff viewpoint,” Delfin’s attorney further states in court papers.
A female juror said in a sworn declaration that she initially favored finding on behalf of Delfin, but that the juror who spoke about retaliation and reporting it to a newspaper, as well as two panel members who spoke of their managerial experience, convinced her to switch her vote in favor of the college.
“If they had not made those statements, I would not have changed my yes vote as I believed Whittier College retaliated against Dr. Delfin,” the juror said.
Attorneys for the college maintained in their pretrial court papers that the student Delfin supported had reported Iyam’s alleged misconduct, not the plaintiff. Representative for the school also said Delfin improved her career by getting hired at Cal Poly Pomona. But in her suit filed in May 2019, Delfin contended that despite the student complaints about Iyam, the college promoted him to full professor in 2014 before it allowed him to resign in 2016.
“Instead of protecting its students and staff, the leaders at Whittier College chose to protect Professor Iyam by allowing him free rein to continue sexually harassing, assaulting, and battering whomever he pleased by ratifying his conduct again and again,” according to the court papers filed on behalf of four former students who opened a separate case against Iyam and reached a settlement in 2023.
As one of Whittier College’s few Black professors and a well-published Fulbright scholar, Iyam was regularly praised by faculty and administration, according to the students’ suit, which alleged that school leaders and employees “conspired to fraudulently conceal Professor Iyam’s sexual misconduct for at least a decade, if not longer, in order to avoid any private or public accountability and civil as well as potential criminal liability.”