Jerry Sandusky Scandal
Court to reconsider legal fees for PSU alumni-elected trustees
Penn State may be paying the bills for legal action from several trustees.
In November, Ted Brown, Barbara Doran, Bob Jubelirer, Anthony Lubrano, Ryan McCombie, Bill Oldsey and Alice Pope won the right to have access to the Freeh report documents, but that wasn’t the end of their court action.
The trustees filed a petition in April, asking the Centre County court to compel the university to allow them access to the source documents for the investigation of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal. Penn State commissioned former FBI director and federal judge Louis Freeh to conduct the review in 2011, shortly after Sandusky’s arrest.
The report was returned in July 2012 and was the basis for the NCAA sanctions levied against the university and repealed in January 2015.
After unsuccessfully asking the board of trustees to review the report in 2014, the alumni-elected trustees asked to conduct their own review, but were told they could not have unfettered access to the documents, which were confidential.
In May, they told the university that following the case to court would mean that they would expect those legal fees to be absorbed by the university, as a part of their fiduciary duty as trustees.
Penn State responded with an open letter from President Eric Barron, calling the legal action, and the request regarding fees, outrageous.
“The university will not pay you to sue us,” he wrote.
But with Bedford County Senior Judge Daniel Howsare’s ruling that the trustees were entitled to the documents, the fee issue came into question. Trustees filed a document last week asking the court to reconsider one part of that ruling, with regard to “each side to pay their own counsel fees and costs.”
Attorney Daniel Brier said that “fails to require the university to reimburse petitioner trustees for counsel fees incurred in enforcing their statutory right to access the source materials.”
The university responded, asking that if the court issued an order, it only preserve the trustees’ right to appeal and not the merits of the motion.
Howsare responded with an order Monday granting a reconsideration of the order and agreeing to schedule a hearing, but said he was not ruling on the issue itself.
“The university has stated the legal action by seven alumni-elected trustees was an unnecessary and wasteful expense. The judge has made clear in this order that at this time the court is not addressing or ruling on the merits of the petitioner’s motion,” said Penn State spokeswoman Lisa Powers.
Lori Falce: 814-235-3910, @LoriFalce
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