Remember, we're only seeing one side of the story. This is very similar to the Khouri case at Kaiser.
UTSW is not obligated to telegraph their side.
Medical schools do not dismiss students for trivial reasons. Rest assured that multiple lawyers have gone over this to make sure that the schools actions are defensible, if not actually Bulletproof.
This isn’t entirely true. Both the plaintiff and the defendants have made claims, and all of those are outlined in the documents. What is true is that right now they are at motion to dismiss so there hasn’t been any discovery. We have claims from both sides but the courts have not actually considered evidence
from either side. The other problem with motion to dismiss documents is that they can easily read as one person having a better case than they do—usually the plaintiff. As mentioned in the document, motion to dismiss only considers the merit of the plaintiff’s claims if true. It is meant to prevent frivolous lawsuits. Even people with weak cases can have a good lawyer draw up claims with facial merit.
All of this said, based on the claims we can infer a few things. It does sound like the plaintiff is prepared to present expert evidence that the recording was altered. Additionally, the court seems ready to interpret the procedural due process claims in such a way that the plaintiff is fundamentally entitled to see all the evidence factoring into a decision to expel and have the opportunity to respond, up to and including cross-examining witnesses.
I think the critical issue is related to the procedural due process claims. Specifically, I think it is going to turn on whether or not the school actually dismissed the charges, then summarily expelled the student on new evidence without a new hearing. If this is true, this would seem to be a major problem for the defendants based on the way the court is interpreting the law.
Also, my guess is that there is going to be some evidence that the student was not actually afforded a hearing. The plaintiff’s lawyer does not seem stupid. These types of things usually have a paper trail. I don’t think they would bother making this claim if there was likely to be strong evidence that the plaintiff was actually afforded a hearing. Also, it does not seem like the defendants actually dispute this point. Their claims, instead, seem to imply that there’s no proof that they considered new evidence and that it’s not clear that the plaintiff is entitled to cross-examine witnesses in an expulsion proceeding. The court has already dismissed these points, calling the first “specious” and stating that given disputes about the credibility of the evidence and the testimony of the alleged victim, at minimum the plaintiff should have been afforded the opportunity to see the evidence against him, respond and cross-examine the alleged victim.
So overall, I agree that we don’t know the full story. Neither does the court, as discovery hasn’t happened yet. However, some of the plaintiff’s claims would be very problematic for the defendants in the context of the law as interpreted by the court. Additionally, some of these same claims don’t actually appear to be disputed by the defendants.
