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Homelessness

Once-homeless University of Chicago law grad getting treatment, hopes to return to law practice

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 19, 2025, 12:41 pm CDT

A University of Chicago Law School graduate who lived for two years on the streets of Los Angeles has moved back home with his mother in Virginia and hopes to resume law practice.

Rob Dart moved home in January and has been taking anti-psychotic medication for more than three months, the Wall Street Journal reports. He is taking online continuing legal education classes and hopes to regain his law license.

The Wall Street Journal had chronicled efforts by Dart’s family to help him in articles published this month and in May 2024. He began hearing voices when he was 35 years old and returned to his mother’s home at that time. He received medication and therapy for two years but quit treatment in 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dart ended up homeless in Los Angeles. His sister and mother had traveled to California to try to help him, but he often rejected them.

The Wall Street Journal’s coverage spurred some people to offer help. One reader set up a tab for Dart at a coffee shop. Another connected Dart’s family with a psychiatrist affiliated with a Pasadena, California, hospital who said he would treat Dart when he was willing to accept help.

Late last year, Dart began treatment at the hospital. But during the wildfires in Los Angeles earlier this year, Dart successfully petitioned for release. Days later, he agreed to return to his mother’s home and began treatment.

Online records indicate that Dart was admitted to law practice in Illinois in 2004 and in California in 2009. He was suspended in California for failure to meet state CLE requirements in 2022 and for failure to pay fees in 2023. He also failed to show compliance with Illinois CLE requirements and was last registered there in 2022.

Dart’s last registered address with Illinois attorney regulators was at the Wilshire Law Firm in Los Angeles.

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3. Former George Mason University law prof says…

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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3. BigLaw firm gets benchslapped for downplaying…

Appellate Practice

BigLaw firm gets benchslapped for downplaying university deception in appellate brief’s facts section

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 28, 2024, 11:31 am CST

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher went too far when it used the facts section of an appellate brief to present “a one-sided narrative” that downplayed adverse findings against its client, according to an appeals court.

The California Court of Appeal’s Fourth Appellate District criticized Gibson Dunn in an opinion that reduced a $22.3 million award against Zovio Inc. and Ashford University, an online school that is owned by Zovio. Gibson Dunn represented the defendants.

Original Jurisdiction noted the unpublished Feb. 20 decision.

“One common practice pointer for brief writing is not to forfeit the opportunity to use the facts section as a vehicle for subtle advocacy. But don’t go too far, lest you get benchslapped,” wrote Original Jurisdiction author David Lat in his Judicial Notice newsletter.

Zovio and Ashford University were found liable for making false and misleading statements to prospective students in violation of California’s unfair competition and false advertising laws. The appeals court reduced the award by $933,453 because the civil penalty was partly based on false advertising violations that fell outside the statute of limitations.

The appeals court’s criticism of Gibson Dunn begins at page 15.

Gibson Dunn’s factual recitation “highlights favorable testimony while ignoring or downplaying the trial court’s adverse factual findings,” the appeals court complained.

The appeals court included some examples. The brief said Ashford University sought to be a “place of opportunity” for disadvantaged students while “downplaying that the court found Ashford deceived those same students,” the appeals court said.

The brief also emphasized executives’ testimony that the role of admissions counselors was to help and educate, “ignoring that the court found defendants’ admissions counselors were sales people who were pressured to persuade prospective students to enroll,” according to the appeals court.

The appeals court noted the advice in a leading practice guide, which says the appellant’s brief “should accurately and fairly state the critical facts (including the evidence), free of bias, and likewise as to the applicable law.”

“We disapprove of the distorted narrative defendants have presented here,” the appeals court said. “And while defendants deny that they have raised a sufficiency of the evidence challenge to the trial court’s factual findings, we observe that any such challenge has also been forfeited due to their briefing violation.”

The appeals court also said the brief is “peppered with factual statements” that have no citation to the supporting record. And the brief intends to convey that Zovio suffered financial ruin after the judgment, but the assertion is based on outside materials, the appeals court said.

The appeals court said it was ignoring “unsourced factual assertions” and “citations to materials published on the internet as well as the facts they purportedly contain.”

Gibson Dunn did not immediately respond to the ABA Journal’s email request for comment.

The U.S. Department of Education imposed a record $14 million fine on Liberty University over rampant violations of federal law related to campus safety, authorities announced on Tuesday. The investigation into the university was prompted by a 2021 lawsuit alleging repeat mishandling of sexual assault complaints.

Federal officials issued the fine against the Virginia-based evangelical Christian institution for failure to comply with the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security and Campus Crime Statistics Act. The law passed in 1990, mandates certain crime reporting requirements for schools that receive federal student aid funds.

The $14 million fine was assessed against Liberty as part of a settlement agreement over “material and ongoing violations” violations of their obligations under the Clery Act, including “its published crime statistics and treatment of sexual assault survivors,” the Department of Education said in a press release.

“This is the largest fine ever imposed for violating the Clery Act,” the agency said.

A small Christian college in Kentucky is mourning the loss of a student who was found murdered in his dorm room early Saturday morning. Now a fellow student at Campbellsville University, a 21-year-old man, is facing a murder charge, authorities say.

Campbellsville Police Department officers were called to the school’s campus after 18-year-old Josiah Malachi Kilman was found unresponsive in his dorm room. Paramedics took Kilman to Taylor Regional Hospital where he was pronounced dead. Cops did not release a cause of death but said the Kentucky State Medical Examiner’s Office in Louisville will conduct an autopsy.