Dive Brief:
- A judge has ordered Chicago State University to pay $3 million to a former employee who won a whistleblower case.
- The whistleblower, James Crowley, was the university’s senior legal counsel. A jury decided in February that the university fired him in retaliation for him alleging misconduct by the president and other top officials at the school.
- This is believed to be the first verdict from a whistleblower claim filed under an Illinois employee ethics law passed in 2003.
Dive Insight:
Maybe the lesson here is: Don’t mess with your senior legal counsel. Crowley won $2 million in punitive damages and $480,000 in back pay, and then the Cook County Circuit Court judge doubled the back pay. Plus, he receives $60,000 in interest on the back pay and is getting his job back. In May, the court is set to decide on whether Chicago State will also pay attorney fees. The university’s board recently cut the annual salary of the president, Wayne Watson, to $146,363 from $250,000, but extended his contract through 2016. Since Watson took over as president in 2009, enrollment at Chicago State has declined 21.2%, to 5,701 students, according to the Chicago Tribune.