A judge has issued a tentative decision against a professor who sued UCLA after he was suspended in the wake of the George Floyd-Black Lives Matter riots after refusing a request to grade black students leniently.
Superior Court Judge H. Jay Ford’s recent ruling against UCLA accounting lecturer Gordon Klein sides with UCLA on all three causes of action: breach of contract, false light, and negligent interference with prospective earnings.
Klein’s legal team has filed an appeal, and Judge Ford is scheduled to consider that request, or enter a decision finalizing his tentative ruling, at a hearing scheduled for Jan. 9.
If the judge does not amend his tentative ruling, Klein will receive nothing in a case in which he sought a $13 million dollar award, alleging the university and a former UCLA business school dean destroyed his lucrative expert witness practice when it publicly suspended him.
“It’s a bloodbath against Klein. It rewards him nothing,” said documentarian Rob Montz in a documentary on the controversy he published last week first reporting on Ford’s Dec. 1 ruling titled “When a Professor Took His Cancellation to Trial.”
“No punitive damages, no compensatory damages,” Montz said. “Gordon doesn’t get a dollar.”
Klein, who has now taught at UCLA for about 45 years, argued in his lawsuit he averaged about $1 million annually as an expert witness in many high-profile corporate cases.
But he argued his suspension meant he would have to disclose that administrative punishment, hurting his credibility with jurors and effectively making him undesirable as an expert witness.
Ford, in his 30-page ruling, agrees UCLA had the contractual right to place Klein on administrative leave while it investigated the massive controversy surrounding Klein’s email to a student rejecting his request to grade black students leniently and the viral uproar it created.
“UCLA had the right to determine what public response was necessary to address and mitigate the immediate [and] extraordinary public outrage toward both Klein and UCLA arising from the public disclosure of Klein’s email,” Ford wrote.
Hellbound and Down 