Central Michigan University is seeking almost $200,000 in attorney fees against a former basketball player, who alleged that she was run off the school’s team because she was heterosexual.
CMU moved for sanctions against Brooke Heike and her attorney, Cindy Rhodes Victor, arguing that a lawsuit filed 18 months earlier amounted to “salacious claims regarding race and sexual preference discrimination merely to garner media attention and to publicly embarrass CMU and the individual defendants.”
In that suit, Heike accused women’s basketball coach Sue Guevara, Athletic Director Dave Heeke, CMU and its Board of Trustees and Assistant Director of Scholarships and Financial Aid Patricia Pickler, of discriminating against her based on her sexual orientation.
Last fall, a federal judge from the Eastern District of Michigan dismissed most of the lawsuit, finding that the school and several individual defendants were shielded by governmental immunity protections. That opinion was summarized is the November 06, 2009 issue of Sports Litigation Alert. The rest of the claim was dismissed last spring.
In defending itself, CMU accrued its legal fees with its law firm of Fraser, Trebilcock, Davis and Dunlap, P.C. Kathleen Kelly, legal assistant for General Counsel Manuel Rupe, informed the student newspaper, along with other materials that were in response to FOIA request, that the school relied primarily on attorney Michael E. Cavanaugh, who billed out at the rate of $210/hour.
Heike and “her attorney violated … numerous respects by filing and proceeding with this frivolous lawsuit, and defendants are entitled to an appropriate sanction, including their attorney fees,” Cavanaugh said in the motion filed through district court against Heike and her lawyer.”
