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Verdicts & Settlements

Former George Mason University law prof says he’s ‘fully vindicated’ after ‘relatively modest’ defamation suit settlement

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 12, 2025, 2:59 pm CDT

A former professor at the George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School has reached a settlement in his defamation lawsuit against two former students who alleged that he abused his power to initiate sexual relationships with them when they were law students.

Professor Joshua D. Wright settled with Elyse Dorsey and dropped his claim against Freshfields counsel Angela Landry, report Law.com, Law360 and Reuters.

His suit, filed in Fairfax County, Virginia, circuit court, had sought $108 million in damages.

The articles identify Dorsey as a Kirkland & Ellis partner, but the law firm’s website page for her appears to have been removed.

Dorsey’s settlement “provides Wright with a relatively modest amount of compensation and allows Dorsey to continue speaking out,” Law.com reports. Wright filed a motion to end the litigation last week.

Wright had maintained that the relationships were consensual, and the two women were “scorned former lovers.” In a statement released to Law360, he said he is “relieved to have been fully vindicated. The evidence has made it undeniably clear that the relationships in question were consensual from the start. I remain fully committed to defending my reputation and will not hesitate to take further legal action if necessary to hold accountable those responsible for false accusations.”

The two defendants said they were pleased with the development.

A statement by Dorsey’s lawyer said the settlement will exclusively be paid from insurance “and constituted less than 0.3% of the damages professor Wright sought in the litigation,” according to Law.com.

“Settling this case was a difficult decision, but it allows me to continue my advocacy work without the distraction or continued trauma of ongoing litigation,” Dorsey said in a statement cited by Law.com.

Wright has the option of refiling his claim within six months against Landry. Her lawyer, Stacey Rose Harris, told Law.com that the dismissal “obviously speaks for itself.”

“Parties ‘vindicated’ in litigation don’t voluntarily dismiss their own claims on the eve of trial,” Harris said.

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Federal prosecutors in Minnesota have hit back at Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis cop convicted of murdering George Floyd, for successfully motioning to get tests done on heart and fluid samples on file from Floyd’s autopsy, saying “it defies belief” that he’d ask.

“No legal basis exists for Defendant’s discovery requests,” prosecutors charged Tuesday in a motion to reconsider after U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson granted Chauvin’s legal team access to the samples a day earlier. “It defies belief that, if Defendant had been aware of a weaker medical defense theory than the one already rejected by his state jury, he would have chosen trial again, in the face of overwhelming evidence and a Guidelines sentence of life.”

Chauvin, 48, is looking to run tests on Floyd’s heart and fluid samples to see if it was a heart condition that ultimately led to his death and not Chauvin’s knee being on Floyd’s neck for more than 9 minutes, per prosecutors. His lawyers believe Floyd may have died due to a “catecholamine crisis when his paraganglioma secreted excessive levels of catecholamines,” according to the discovery motion filed by them on Dec. 13, with a “pulmonary edema” possibly being caused by Takotsubo’s myocarditis, which is described by Chauvin’s legal team as a type of a heart attack or acute heart failure.

A federal judge on Friday finally pulled out the remaining stops and ordered a quick series of depositions in a contentious defamation case involving ABC News and President-elect Donald Trump.

In a terse, two-page order, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida ordered star anchor George Stephanopoulos to sit down and answer questions under oath and in person. Notably, the judge also ordered the 45th and 47th president to do the same.

And, those depositions must occur sometime next week.

The once and future president is suing because Stephanopoulos said “more than 10 times” on “This Week” in March that Trump had been found “liable for rape” in the E. Jean Carroll civil case.

The underlying lawsuit was filed just eight days after that segment — during which the anchor interviewed Rep. Nancy Mace, a Georgia Republican, and pressed her to explain her support for Trump.

The implication was never left in doubt during the broadcast: Stephanopoulos pointed out Mace herself is a rape victim and repeatedly claimed Trump had been found “liable for rape” by a jury.

The upshot of the Carroll lawsuit, however, is unclear.

The lawsuit argues that ABC and Stephanopoulos defamed Trump in an article’s initial headline and during the broadcast with the claim — even though the jury verdict sheet specifically said “no” as to the rape allegation.

What complicated matters was some verbiage from a post-verdict opinion written by Senior U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan.

In a footnote, the judge wrote: “As the jury’s response to Question 2 was an implicit finding that Mr. Trump forcibly digitally penetrated Ms. Carroll’s vagina, no explicit independent finding by the Court is necessary. Nevertheless, the Court alternatively finds that he did so.”

Under New York law, forcible digital penetration does not qualify as rape, the judge explained. But, he added that “far narrower” definition conflicts with the “common modern parlance.”

“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,”” Kaplan wrote. “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

More Law&Crime coverage: ‘No reason for any further delay’: Fed-up judge in Trump defamation case against ABC News, George Stephanopoulos refuses demand to push back trial date

Still, law thrives on definitional precision.

Trump’s lawsuit argues Stephanopoulos must have known his statements were false because he has “vast experience as a journalist” and once “specifically” asked E. Jean Carroll how she felt that Trump “was not found liable for rape.” The plaintiff further alleged ABC rebuffed a retraction demand and did not apologize, only changing an article headline from “Nancy Mace defends her support Trump after he was found liable for rape” to “Nancy Mace defends her support Trump after he was found liable for sexual assault.”

The parties have battled it out in motions practice for months. Last month, Chief U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga got fed up with the state of play and declined to reschedule deadlines related to expert witnesses, discovery, mediation, and various pretrial motions.

Currently, the trial is slated to begin on April 7, 2025, and is anticipated to last between three to five days.

In her latest order, the judge ordered depositions for both men “be scheduled to take place the week of December 16, 2024.”

Each deposition will be limited to four hours.

Additionally, the court ordered ABC News to provide “all remaining documents (if any) related to Plaintiff’s damages, for review by Plaintiff’s damages expert” by Dec. 15.

Altonaga warned ABC News and Trump that she would not countenance any further efforts at pushing things back from either side.

“The parties are reminded that the Court ‘has already granted a lengthy discovery period . . . and, with Election Day now behind us, there is no reason for any further delay,’” the order concludes — quoting her own November order. “The parties shall continue to meet and confer regarding their remaining discovery disputes.”