ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, July 25, 1996 TAG: 9607250051
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE AND LISA K. GARCIA STAFF WRITERS
Former Virginia Tech student Christy Brzonkala has filed two more lawsuits - these in state court - against the university and three football players she says were involved in raping her and covering up the crime.
The two suits were filed to meet the one-year statute of limitations, which was up July 21 - the anniversary of the second judicial board hearing Tech held in the case, said Brzonkala's attorney, Eileen Wagner.
Wagner said she has no plans at this point to serve notice on the defendants, which formally notifies them that they are being sued and requires them to respond. But the state suits can be served if the pending federal suit is dismissed.
Tech already has been dismissed from Brzonkala's federal suit, and she has appealed to the 4th U.S. Court of Appeals. One football player, Cornell Brown, was dismissed as a defendant by mutual agreement. Chief U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser is considering a motion to dismiss the suit against the two players accused of rape.
The federal suit invokes the untested Violence Against Women Act of 1994, accusing the players of a gender-motivated hate crime.
The two new suits allege that the university and the players interfered with Brzonkala's access to fair hearings on her claims of sexual assault.
Brown, along with his suite-mates Tony Morrison and James Crawford, coordinated false testimony at two judicial board hearings, according to the suit filed against them in Montgomery County. Morrison and Crawford are accused of raping Brzonkala, a fellow freshman, in September 1994, while Brown is alleged to have provided a false alibi.
Brzonkala did not seek criminal charges, but made a complaint through Tech's internal judicial system in the spring of 1995. No action was taken against Crawford, but Morrison was found guilty of sexual assault the first time. He was granted a second hearing last summer and was found guilty of the lesser offense of using abusive language.
Both times, Morrison was suspended for two semesters, a punishment upheld by the school's appeals officer after the first hearing. But after the second hearing, Tech's provost overturned his punishment, saying it was too harsh for the offense.
The suit against Tech, which was filed in Richmond, where Wagner practices, accuses the school of breach of contract.
A university handbook is a legal contract between the school and its students under certain circumstances, Wagner said. In this case, she said, Tech breached that contract by violating the handbook's assurance that the decision of the appeals officer will be final.
"We don't believe that a student life policy is an implied contract, and that's what we'll argue," Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said when told of the suit Wednesday.
The three players are accused of tortious interference with a contract, fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud and intentional infliction of emotional distress. By allegedly lying during the hearings about events the night of the incident, the players caused Tech to breach its duty "to give plaintiff a fair opportunity to redress her injuries," the suit says.
Crawford's attorney, Joe Painter, called the lawsuit's pleadings "a very unusual interpretation of Anglo-American law."
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