ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 28, 1996 TAG: 9604290045
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
CHRISTY BRZONKALA'S SUIT AGAINST TECH is right up Eileen Wagner's alley - and Wagner is willing to appeal to the court of public opinion, utilizing the media in her battle.
Starting a new career when you're 43 isn't easy. Ask Eileen Wagner.
``I got out of law school in 1991; I said, `Golly, I'm too old for a law firm,''' the Richmond attorney said.
She didn't want to take orders from someone younger. And jobs would be scarce anyway, one of her law professors had said. So she plunged in on her own and discovered there was a market for an attorney with her particular background: teaching English in college.
In her brief life as a lawyer, Wagner has proved quite willing to take on David-and-Goliath fights - and, in some cases, to chat easily with the press about them.
She took on The College of William & Mary and Virginia Commonwealth University after women students said they were sexually harassed by professors.
She now represents Christy Brzonkala, the former student suing Virginia Tech because, Brzonkala says, two football players raped her in a dorm room.
The Brzonkala suit was filed soon after Tech won the Sugar Bowl Dec. 31. Since then, stories about it have appeared in The New York Times and People magazine, and Wagner discussed it with Geraldo Rivera on his nighttime talk show on CNBC.
The one financial offer to Brzonkala from a media outlet came from "An American Journal,'' which was going to give her $750 to cover filing fees for the suit in exchange for breaking the story nationally, Wagner said. But The New York Times beat the tabloid TV show to the story.
Some say Wagner is trying the Brzonkala case in the press. But others say she has discovered that the court of public opinion may be the only place where still-stigmatized victims of alleged sexual harassment or assault can get a fair hearing.
Wagner says publicity is just one option a client may choose in a case. Brzonkala said recently she doesn't want to give interviews any more. Given the high interest, however, Wagner has set up a special telephone line to deal with the case.
"I think what she tries to do is raise the issues, and show the actual damage done to the plaintiff," said Karen Veselits, the William and Mary doctoral candidate who says she rebuffed the advances of an influential professor and hired Wagner to save her studies.
"I think she utilizes the press so her plaintiff has a forum to speak. ... I think the other side utilizes the press quite as much as Eileen does; they just aren't used to a private attorney using it," Veselits said.
"Eileen Wagner is very media savvy," said Bill Hurd, the state's deputy attorney general for education cases.
"Any lawyer that has the capacity to file a complaint with the court will ensure the case is not swept under the carpet," he said. ``[But] media relations is a whole different kettle of fish.''
Wagner, daughter of an Army man, was born in Jefferson City, Mo., and moved to Richmond when she was 5. Her husband, Lester, is a developer who builds special housing, like group homes. The mother of three teen-agers, she holds a doctorate in education from the University of Virginia and a law degree from the University of Richmond's T.C. Williams School of Law.
She was an assistant professor of English at historically black Virginia Union University, where she landed her first full-time job after earning her doctorate. She also taught English at John Tyler Community College and Virginia Commonwealth University.
She left full-time teaching to spend more time with her family, but, as she says, "I'd wanted to go to law school since 1969. I just didn't have the money."
Wagner's background in education makes her "uniquely prepared" to handle cases such as Brzonkala's and Veselits', said Sylvia Clute, the Richmond attorney for whom Wagner clerked in law school.
Wagner also represents professors who may have disputes with their university administrations.
"She won't represent administration; we feel pretty good about that," said Jim Trometer, a University of Richmond professor and president of the Virginia conference of the American Association of University Professors.
Those who know Wagner use such words as "crusader" and "tenacious" to describe her.
"I suspect, from knowing Eileen, she's a bit of a crusader, and she probably has taken cases she knew were difficult because she believed in them," said Robert Shepherd, a University of Richmond law professor.
"I think she's a very zealous and tenacious attorney," Hurd said. ``I would say she likes to be on the cutting edge of the kind of legal issues that interest her.''
Wagner says she became a lawyer because she wanted to do something that made a difference. She also is quick to point out she has done some criminal defense work and has had her share of very private cases that never drew media attention.
And, she says, she's not a crusader at all.
"A crusader means one person who has one idea, and is going to advance that idea. ... I see myself as a craftsman. I've got the law; you've got a problem," Wagner said.
She opens up her "toolbox" of laws, she said, and gets started.
"I'm just another woman out here trying to make sure the world is safe for other people," Wagner said. "That's what we want, for education to be safe and open to everyone."
Wagner also shares a common experience with some of her clients: she says she was sexually assaulted by a classmate when she was in graduate school. She declines to give many details, except to say it was a person she had liked and admired before the incident.
"What it does, it makes me able to see it from that side," she said. "There are many aspects to a sexual assault where a victim thinks, `This is only happening to me,''' she said. ``I can assure people, `You're not alone.'''
Wagner sat on Lt. Gov. Don Beyer's task force on sexual assault in 1991.
"She's certainly had some high-profile cases and cases not in an easy area of the law," said Shepherd, the University of Richmond professor. "Trying to win sex discrimination cases, or cases like the case at Tech - these are difficult types of litigation."
Both the VCU and William and Mary cases were settled:
nVeselits' $2 million suit against William and Mary was filed last year. Veselits said she lost nearly two years of doctoral work because of hassles stemming from the disposition of her internal case against a history professor. After Veselits rebuffed his sexual advances, the professor issued a "punitive" grade, Veselits charged.
In what ended up as a three-way suit among Veselits, the college, and the professor, Veselits ended up with $50,000, Wagner says.
Hurd says it was $30,000, but that $5,000 of that was to be used to purchase an annuity, which might account for the discrepancy.
Amna Kadiki calls Wagner a second mother who helped her through an embarrassing case that made it all the way to the jokesters of "Saturday Night Live." A professor at Virginia Commonwealth University spanked Kadiki in his office after she did poorly on a makeup test, she says. After the first trial ended in a hung jury, Wagner settled the case for $10,500 plus expenses and attorney's fees - and secured a ruling from U.S. District Judge Robert Mehridge in Richmond that holds universities accountable for professors' actions in sexual harassment cases.
And since the point is to change law, and policy, Wagner says she was very happy with that settlement.
She tells her clients, ```You're not going to retire to Jamaica on this, and neither am I. What do we want to do here? We want to make a point,''' she said recently, seated on the couch in her office in Richmond.
"What I'm generally interested in with money damages is to give my clients a breather," she said. "To be able to get the client enough money so they can have a time when they can sort of be in the backwater and not have to worry about holding down a job and paying for tuition and doing all of that. During that rest period, if there is going to be healing, it'll take place there."
What she is not interested in, she says, is revenge.
``As soon as I hear `revenge,' I say, `Well, I think you need to go home and think it over again because I may not be the lawyer for you. I'm not interested in revenge.'''
Virginia Tech's attorney, Kay Heibreder, declined comment for this story. David Paxton of Roanoke, who represents one of the football players, Tony Morrison, said, "It appears to me that she has a larger agenda than just this particular case.
"She wants to educate people. And while certainly lawsuits can be used to bring attention to matters, the court system's really designed to adjudicate claims among individuals and organizations that have particular, specific issue and not an almost larger, legislative agenda."
One clue to Wagner's openness with the media may lie on a page inside the copy of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War," which she keeps on her desk:
"When you are going to attack nearby, make it look as if you are going to go a long way; when you are going to attack far away, make it look as if you are going just a short distance."
``That's the way we practice law in the office,'' Wagner said. ``Our idea is, everyone looks at us when we show up, myself and my client, and say, `Ah, [there's] just one of you.'''
But she also has her tenacity. And some press coverage. Her client, according to a brief in the case filed March 15, has seen "her status as a lone individual with negligible resources" dramatically change. "Media coverage has brought to plaintiff's doorstep legions of well-wishers and supporters, many of whom are willing to muster substantial resources to aid her cause," the brief says.
Mary Ellen Brzonkala says Wagner often has driven to Northern Virginia to sit with her daughter through an interview.
"Any publicity she gets off it," Mary Ellen Brzonkala said, "I figure she deserves."
LENGTH: Long : 174 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON/Staff. Richmond lawyer Eileen Wagnerby CNBrepresents ex-Tech student Christy Brzonkala. color.