CONCORD — Lawyers for nine women and Dartmouth College are scheduled to appear in court via videoconference next month to determine if a proposed $14 million settlement of their sexual misconduct lawsuit against the school is reasonable.
The so-called “fairness” hearing on July 9 will give the parties a chance to weigh in on the settlement first reached last summer.
In addition to Dartmouth, parties include nine named plaintiffs who allege that the college turned a blind eye to misconduct by three former Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences professors and another 67 potential class-action members.
U.S. District Court Chief Judge Landya McCafferty, the judge in the case, gave preliminary approval to the agreement in January.
“We’re past the end of the beginning,” said Holderness, N.H.-based attorney Eric MacLeish, who is not involved in the Dartmouth case but has represented victims of sexual abuse by priests and litigated against several New England private schools.
The suit, which was first filed in November 2018, is now “at the beginning of the end,” MacLeish said.
A spokesperson for the firm of Sanford Heisler Sharp, which represents the plaintiffs, declined comment via email on Tuesday.
The parties are seeking McCafferty’s final approval of the settlement, which in addition to the $14 million also includes Dartmouth-funded efforts under what is known as the Campus Climate and Culture Initiative to prevent similar misconduct in the future.
Dartmouth’s Title IX Office will release an annual report for the academic year 2018-19 in the coming weeks, which for the first time will include every matter reported to the office and its disposition, college spokeswoman Diana Lawrence said in a Tuesday email.
She also noted that despite the COVID-19 pandemic and the switch to remote work and learning, “Dartmouth has continued to conduct active formal investigations.”
In addition to the settlement’s approval, parties to the lawsuit also are seeking McCafferty’s approval of the composition of the class.
As proposed, the class includes 76 current and former women graduate students at Dartmouth who were advisees or assistants of one of the three professors between April 1, 2012, and Aug. 31, 2017, and those who co-authored papers with the professors during that time period.
It also includes those who do not fit within those categories, but were graduate students in the department between March 31, 2015, and Aug. 31, 2017, and say they experienced harm as a result of the professors’ alleged misconduct.
Four of the members of the class have opted out, according to recent court filings. Their names have been redacted from court documents to protect their privacy.
In their request for exclusion, two of the four simply say they’d like to opt out. The third said that she was a teaching assistant for former professor William Kelley, but she did not experience “wrong doings.” She asked that her share of the settlement be allocated to other women “who need support.”
The fourth, however, alleges she suffered “emotional and educational harm between March 31, 2015 and August 31, 2017 as a direct result of the misconduct of William Kelley and Paul Whalen.”
Kelley and Whalen resigned, and the third professor, Todd Heatherton, retired in summer 2018 before any of them could be fired by the college following investigations into their misconduct, which the plaintiffs alleged included a range of behaviors from comments about female students’ appearance to sexual assault.
In settling the case, Dartmouth acknowledged no wrongdoing by the college itself.
The former professors were not named as defendants in the lawsuit but remain under criminal investigation by the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office.
An attorney for Heatherton declined to comment. Kelley and Whalen could not be reached for comment.
Opting out of the class allows the four women to retain the right to pursue separate legal action against the college on their own if they so choose, MacLeish said.
“Their claims will not be extinguished,” he said.
Following the judge’s approval, the money will be distributed to the plaintiffs, MacLeish said.
The Dartmouth researchers who remain as members of the class would also be eligible for payments but would not be able to sue the college separately, he said.
According to the settlement agreement, the size of the payments will be determined by an independent claims expert — a neutral third-party who will be retained by the plaintiffs’ attorneys — based on several factors, including: the severity of allegations; the duration of the mistreatment; and the severity and duration of resulting emotional distress, physical illness, economic losses and other harm.
The July 9 hearing is scheduled to take place at 10 a.m. via Zoom videoconference.
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
