The CSU Office of the Chancellor is weighing its appellate options after a jury awarded a Cal State Los Angeles professor $1 million in his lawsuit contending he suffered a backlash from administrators unhappy with his favorable testimony on behalf of a colleague who also alleged retaliation, the office said Wednesday.
A Los Angeles Superior Court panel reached its verdict in favor of plaintiff Patrick Krug on July 28 after a lengthy trial in the courtroom of Judge Steven Ellis. The tenured biology professor sued the California State University Trustees in February 2021.
“The California State University is evaluating its appeal options following the jury’s non-unanimous verdict awarding $1 million in past emotional distress damages to Dr. Patrick Krug,” according to a statement from a spokesperson for the Chancellor’s Office. “While CSU respects the jury’s service and the judicial process, it respectfully disagrees with the verdict and believes the evidence presented at trial does not support the jury’s finding of retaliation. CSU intends to pursue appropriate post-trial and appellate remedies.”
The CSU denies Krug suffered a backlash from university administrators, campus counsel or any other university representative and contends that he failed to establish at trial that he suffered a material adverse employment action as required by law to prove retaliation, the spokeswoman further said.
The CSU likewise rejects Krug’s allegation that he was offered a “bribe” in connection with his testimony in another lawsuit and notes that although he sought more than $17.5 million in past and future emotional distress damages, the jury awarded only $1 million for past emotional distress and awarded no damages for future emotional distress.
In their court papers, CSU attorneys said Krug suffered no damages because he still had his tenured job and his pay was never reduced. The lawyers also said that pre-trial discovery revealed Krug had shown “egregious violations of university policy, including shockingly racist and sexually degrading statements, that would have disqualified him from commencing or continuing in the faculty athletics representative role had such violations been known sooner.”
Krug was selected by his faculty peers as professor of the year in 2017. In 2015, Krug began a role as faculty athletics representative.
“He was universally loved and respected — until, that is, his role as a witness in the sexual harassment, discrimination and retaliation claims brought by his former female colleague in the Athletics Division, Sheila Hudson,” Krug’s lawyers stated in their court papers.
The CSU pressured Krug to side with them and against Hudson, but he resisted the CSU’s alleged coercion and testified truthfully in her lawsuit, providing corroborating information that “only he was brave enough to reveal,” according to Krug’s attorneys’ court papers.
“Tagged as an adversary to CSU, plaintiff became unwelcome in athletics and from that point forward, he was systematically frozen out from effectively functioning” as the faculty athletics representative, the plaintiff’s lawyers further state.
At least five of CSU’s administrators knew of Krug’s “protected activity” in testifying on Hudson’s behalf, including the university counsel, who called the plaintiff “adversarial to the university” and disparaged Krug when talking to key administrators, Krug’s attorneys stated.
When Krug rejected an offer from another administrator to call Hudson’s claims “meritless” in exchange for more money in the faculty athletics representative role, the administrator became furious and helped provide the same benefit to Krug’s temporary replacement, according to Krug’s attorneys’ court papers, which further state that the university rejected internal complaint claims.
Realizing that the freeze-out had the desired chilling effect on plaintiff’s ability to act as faculty athletics representative, he reluctantly resigned from the position because he recognized that the NCAA and the students, coaches and others in the Athletics Division needed to have a person in the job whom administrators would actually interact with and allow to do the job, Krug’s attorneys stated in their court papers.