Olivia Silvey ’25
Editor-in-Chief
In late January, a judge ruled against the defendants’ motion to strike count three of the complaint in the lawsuit against Trinity College, filed by engineering professor John Mertens in 2024. In count three, Mertens alleges intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED). The defendants, Trinity College and Dean of Faculty Sonia Cardenas, claim that the count is “legally deficient” for a multitude of reasons: “a) the plaintiff fails to allege extreme and outrageous conduct; b) …fails to allege severe emotional distress; c) much of count three is time-barred because the underlying alleged conduct occurred more than three years before this case commenced on Feb. 9, 2024;” defendants also claim that the College “cannot be held vicariously liable” for employee (Cardenas) actions.
Judge Victoria Chavey denied the defendant’s motion to strike on a number of bases. Regarding the defendants’ claim of lack of extreme and outrageous conduct, Chavey states that “even excluding from consideration the allegations relating to the period prior to Feb. 9 2021 the plaintiff’s allegations are sufficient to survive the defendants’ motion to strike. The key reason is that the plaintiff alleges that, in January 2022 and February 2022, the defendants invoked secret information to make fraudulent claims that they had adequate cause to terminate his employment, and they threatened to disclose such information to the college’s board and DEI office, knowing that the information could not properly be the subject of complaints under faculty manual procedures.” Chavey explains that these allegations differentiate Mertens’ case from others because they “go beyond vindictiveness and instead assert threats based on knowingly false statements.”
Regarding the defendants’ argument that Mertens did not allege “mental distress of a very serious kind,” Chavey states that Mertens’ allegations meet the legal standard of distress “so severe that no reasonable [person] could be expected to endure it. The intensity and duration of the distress are factors to be considered in determining its severity.” In the original count, Mertens alleges “loss of enjoyment of life’s activities, harm to his reputation,” threat to his career, lack of safety in the workplace, trouble sleeping, depression, writer’s block, “malaise regarding his scholarship” and the discontinuation of service activities at Trinity. Mertens claims that these effects caused him to seek weekly counseling, which also caused him to incur monetary costs associated with seeking counseling, along with the monetary costs in hiring a lawyer.
Regarding the defendants’ claim that the College “cannot be held vicariously liable” for Cardenas’ actions as an employee, Chavey upholds the opposite; Chavey states that Cardenas was acting “within the scope of her employment” and that “Trinity’s president [Joanne Berger-Sweeney] and board chair [Lisa Bisaccia] knew of and validated Cardenas’ actions.” Furthermore, Chavey confirms that “the actions attributed to Cardenas in count three can be reasonably inferred to have ben undertaken in furtherance of her role as dean of faculty and in furtherance of Trinity as an entity,” specifically citing the involvement of other employees and departments at Trinity such as then-Associate Dean Takunari Miyazaki, the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Human Resources and more.
When asked if and how the ruling changes the plaintiff’s strategy going forward, Mertens said, “I personally am grateful that the judge did such a good job and worked so hard on the ruling, and I think it signals pretty strongly how things are going to go in the future. I hope people read it.”
When asked, the defendants declined to comment.
This is an ongoing story.
Why was this major news story printed below the fold? It obviously doesn’t matter for digital publication, but if you want to continue to print a physical newspaper you should follow the old dictum, “if it bleeds, it leads.”