Trustees, PSU butt heads in Bellefonte over legal fees

A lawyer representing seven Penn State trustees says the university deliberately pushed their case to court to discourage anyone from asking for records in the future.

In court on Tuesday, Daniel Brier told Bedford County Senior Judge Daniel Howsare that he believed the university stonewalled the attempts of Ted Brown, Barbara Doran, Bob Jubelirer, Anthony Lubrano, Ryan McCombie, Bill Oldsey and Alice Pope to access the source documents of the Freeh report, the commissioned investigation of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal, as part of a “war of attrition.”

Howsare ruled in favor of the alumni-elected trustees in November, but said both parties should pay their own court costs. The trustees took the issue back to Howsare, arguing that they were fulfilling their duty as trustees and that both Pennsylvania law and Penn State’s own bylaws required the university to pick up the tab.

“They never expected to win on the merits,” Brier said in Tuesday’s hearing in Bellefonte. “At the end of the day, all they wanted was to teach these people a lesson.”

The university’s attorney, Joseph O’Dea, denied that.

“We have tried to take the high road every way we can,” he said. “We have tried to protect the employees ... and the university does not apologize for that.”

For both, the arguments kept coming back to the idea that everything could have been resolved without going to court.

Penn State argues that from November 2014, the offer was put forward for the trustees to have access to the documents. What was required included a specific confidentiality agreement.

Brier said there was more to it than that. The documents were available, but only if the trustees agreed to come to the law offices of Saul Ewing in Philadelphia. The documents were not to be discussed with or shared with counsel, and no names were to be released.

“It was worrisome they wouldn’t accept without the names,” O’Dea said.

Both of those sides were sticking points from the time the first request was made, through the trustees filing of their petition in April 2015 and after Howsare’s order.

“Don’t be the bully on the playgrounds and say meet me in the courthouse,” Brier said.

Howsare did not render an order after the hearing.

This story was originally published February 2, 2016 at 5:02 PM with the headline "Trustees, PSU butt heads in Bellefonte over legal fees."