A State College law firm said it should be dismissed from a Jerry Sandusky lawsuit because the allegations against it are “vague, illogical and both legally and factually unsupportable.”
McQuaide Blasko makes the argument in a brief filed Monday in U.S. Middle District Court in support of a motion to have it removed from the suit an alleged Sandusky victim filed against the law firm and a number of other defendants including the former assistant football coach and The Second Mile charity.
The victim, identified only as John Doe, alleges he was sexually assaulted by Sandusky in a university swimming pool in 2005.
“Based on that single event, plaintiff unleashes a virtually incomprehensible rant, purporting to allege various constitutional and state law claims against numerous defendants,” the law firm contends.
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McQuaide Blasko is mentioned in the complaint only a few times but it notes “the plaintiff’s careless manner of lumping all the defendants together has forced the firm to respond to plaintiff’s meritless claims.”
In his complaint, Doe asserts the law firm is liable because it represents Penn State and allegedly assisted in the cover up of other incidents of abuse by Sandusky through “political manipulation and other activities.” He accuses McQuaide Blasko of knowing Sandusky of abusing other children. Sandusky was convicted on 45 counts that charged he molested 10 boys over a 15-year period. Doe, now 22 and a Dauphin County native, was not one of the 10.
His suit claims he was living with his grandmother when referred by Edgewater Psychiatric Center in Harrisburg to The Second Mile to participate in its camps where the incident is alleged to have occurred. Doe accuses Sandusky, who is serving a state prison sentence of 30 to 60 years due to his conviction, with briefly touching him inappropriately in a pool.
The suit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive claiming violations of the man’s due process, right to privacy and free from assault at the hands of state officials. Doe’s attorney, former auditor general Don Bailey, uses the complaint to charge Penn State has succeeded over the years in preventing criminal and civil prosecution of matters of great public concern that were detrimental to the university.
The complaint alleges Gov. Tom Corbett and other university trustees were aware Sandusky was a sexual predator but did nothing to stop it. Corbett and the trustees are not named as defendants.
Other defendants include Penn State, former president Graham Spanier, on-leave athletic director Tim Curley, retired senior vice president Gary Schultz and Wendell Courtney, a lawyer with McQuaide Blasko.
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