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After nearly two years on hold, former Penn State University President Graham Spanier will be able to move forward with his defamation suit against Louis Freeh and his investigation group, but Spanier may not directly sue his former employer for breach of contract.
Lebanon County Court of Common Pleas Judge Robert Eby ruled Monday to modify a stay in the
Spanier v. Freeh case that has been in place since February 2014. As part of the determination to lift the stay, Eby said Spanier, who is facing criminal charges over his handling of reports of sex abuse at the hands of serial child molester Jerry Sandusky, has told the court he does not plan on invoking his Fifth Amendment privilege in the civil suit.
While the ruling also allowed Spanier to sue Freeh’s investigative group, Freeh Group International Solutions, which is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Pepper Hamilton, the court rejected Spanier’s attempts to sue Penn State over claims that the school violated its separation agreement with Spanier by failing to stop “negative comments” from being made about him publicly.
Freeh, along with his firm, Freeh, Sporkin & Sullivan, had been hired by Penn State to investigate the university’s response to reports of sex abuse by Sandusky. Freeh and Freeh Sporkin then hired the Freeh Group to work on the investigation.
In his 12-page opinion, Eby said he did not find a sufficient link between Spanier’s claims against Freeh and Penn State to grant Spanier’s motion for joinder.
The claims against Freeh and his team focus on the Freeh report, which detailed findings that Spanier and others allegedly dragged their feet in addressing the claims about Sandusky. Spanier’s claims against the university, Eby said, deal exclusively with the terms of Spanier’s separation agreement.
“We are not persuaded that the liability plaintiff ascribes to Freeh and FSS in his tort claims and that which he ascribes to Penn State in the proposed breach of contract counts arise from a common factual background, even though, in the broadest sense, both involve fallout from the Sandusky investigation,” Eby said. “No fact proven in plaintiff’s tort action against Freeh and FSS would be dispositive of a factual issue in his contract action against Penn State.”
A fuller version of this article will be posted later when the article is completed.
