Lawsuit Breakdown: The Defendants

[The series Lawsuit Breakdown will attempt to highlight the main points of the lawsuit filed on 12/18/07 (part 1, part 2 and part 3) by attorneys for Ryan McFayden, Matt Wilson and Breck Archer with a focus on Duke University's involvement in the scandal.]

The Duke University defendants identified in the lawsuit are grouped as follows:

A. Duke University Defendants
__1. Duke Police Defendants
____a. Duke Police Supervising Defendants
____b. Duke Police Investigator Defendants
__2. Duke Officials Defendants
____a. Crisis Management Team Defendants
____b. Duke Administrator Defendants
__3. Duke SANE Defendants

1. Duke Police Defendants
The inclusion of the Duke Police in the lawsuit comes as quite a surprise to a number of us that have followed the affair as they have not been given much notice. However the lawsuit's allegations regarding the matter of jurisdiction - that Duke Police and not Durham Police in fact had jurisdiction as the site of the alleged rape was Duke property - in this affair constitute an intriguing matter that has been widely unnoticed and overlooked. Then again perhaps the lawsuit explains why we haven't heard much about this issue of jurisdiction:

"The fact of Duke Police Department’s jurisdictional obligation to investigate Mangum’s false accusations was kept secret through another overarching conspiracy among all Defendants to publicly and privately conceal it" (p. 4).

The lawsuit names several individuals within the DuPD as defendants grouped as supervising defendants and investigator defendants.

We will delve into the fascinating matter of jurisdiction in a separate post.

2. Duke Officials Defendants
__a. Crisis Management Team (CMT) Defendants
The lawsuit explains that "the CMT was formed to direct the University’s conduct in the
investigation of Mangum’s false allegations" (p. 13). Each of the members, listed below, are listed as individual defendants in the lawsuit.

Crisis Management Team:
Robert K. Steel, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Duke University Board of Trustees; Richard Brodhead, President; Peter Lange, Provost; Tallman Trask, Executive Vice President; John Burness, Senior Vice President for Public Affairs & Government Relations; Larry Moneta, Vice President for Student Affairs; Victor J. Dzau, Chancellor for Health Affairs, and President and Chief Executive Officer of Duke University Health Systems, Inc.; and Allison Halton, University Secretary.

We will elaborate on each individual's alleged involvement in subsequent posts.

__b. Duke Administrator Defendants
The Duke Administrator Defendants are Duke administrators not member to the Crisis Management Team, and are listed below.

Kemel Dawkins, Vice President for Campus Services; Suzanne Wasiolek, Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students; Stephen Bryan, Associate
Dean of Students and Director of Judicial Affairs; and Matthew Drummondd, Senior Manager IT in Auxiliary Services and Head of the University’s Duke Card Office.

3. Duke SANE Defendants
The complainant in the false rape claim, Crystal Mangum, was examined by Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) nurses at the Duke University Medical Center.

The Duke SANE Defendants are listed below.

Duke University Health Systems Inc. (DUHS); Private Diagnostic Clinic, PLLC (PDC), Julie Manly M.D., member of the DUHS House Staff, a physician member of the PDC, and an affiliated physician at Duke University; Theresa Arico R.N., clinical nurse on DUHS’s staff; and Tara Levicy R.N., SANE-in-Training.

Similarly, more to come on each individual's involvement in subsequent posts.