Courtesy of the University Police Department
By Emily Wunderlich
It cost the university $75,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a former female student who was accosted in the campus parking garage four years ago.
But the final cost will likely be much higher.
Documents from the Florida Division of Risk Management, the university’s insurance carrier, show that the woman agreed to settle her lawsuit against the university for $75,000.
Under the terms of the settlement, reached Dec. 5 with the help of a mediator, both sides in the protracted legal battle agreed to pay their own attorney fees and court costs.
University spokeswoman Carrie O’Brion said the university “does not have the information necessary” to answer questions about its attorney fees or the cost of the Sarasota-based mediator.
“The attorney and mediator’s invoices would be directed to the state (Division of Risk Management) to be paid,” she said in an email.
The attorney fees could be high.
The university retained a private law firm, Goodis Thompson and Miller of St. Petersburg, to represent it in the lawsuit, which was filed June 5, 2017, and played out in a lengthy array of filings and hearings over two and a half years.
Attorney fees vary widely, depending on attorney-client contracts, prevailing rates and the attorneys’ experience and specialization. But they typically range from $100 to several hundred dollars an hour.
Although the university agreed to pay the former student $75,000, the settlement stresses that the payment cannot be “construed as an admission of liability.”
The lawsuit contends that the former student – identified as L.E. in court documents – was “sexually assaulted” by a man who masturbated behind her in a parking garage elevator on the afternoon of Feb. 22, 2016.
The university acknowledged that L.E. was a victim of “lewdness and/or indecent exposure,” but argued that she had not been sexually assaulted under the definitions in federal law.
The woman’s social media indicates that she graduated from the university in 2017. Although some court documents fail to redact her name, The Crow’s Nest does not name victims of sex-related crimes.
She did not respond to a request for comment from the newspaper.
A non-student named Willie Fudge III was arrested seven days after the parking garage incident.
He was charged with one count of exposure of sexual organs – a misdemeanor – and four counts of battery, for touching a person against her will. He was not charged with sexual assault.
The parking garage charges, plus an earlier conviction for grand theft and a later penalty for violating probation, landed Fudge in the Pinellas County jail between May 2016 and February 2017 and in state prison between July 2017 and February 2018.
Such a snazzy dresser