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Reifschneider v. UCLA: Observations on UCLA's Respondent's Brief
UCLA filed a 70-page Respondent's Brief in February with the California State
Court of Appeal in Reifschneider v. UCLA. Former Chemistry Department graduate
student Diane Reifschneider is appealing the verdict in the 1998 jury trial of her
sexual harassment case against her thesis advisor, Professor Malcolm Nicol, and
against UCLA. If she wins the appeal, she is entitled to a new trial. Here are some
observations regarding the brief.
Much of Reifschneider's appeal concerns the pretrial dismissal of 11 of her
12 causes of action. Yet, in several sections, UCLA's arguments seem dependent
on the jury's verdict. Since she claims the dismissed causes of action prohibited
the jury from reviewing key evidence, it seems invalid for UCLA to use the verdict to
justify its arguments.
The brief contains 10 pages of details about trial defendant Nicol's alleged
"consensual relationship" with Reifschneider before launching into legal
arguments regarding applicable case law and statutes (p. 23). Several pages are
devoted to item-by-item lists of the gifts that Nicol bought for Reifschneider leading
our (non-legal) reviewer to wonder if the legal discussion is too weak to stand on its
own merits. UCLA contradicts its characterization of the personal relationship
between Nicol and Reifschneider by confirming that "they always took separate
rooms" when they traveled to off-campus research sites.
UCLA offers no explanation why Reifschneider never introduced Nicol to her
friends or family as her "boyfriend" or acted in other ways one would
expect in a relationship as serious as UCLA portrays it. Although the brief claims
Nicol was "in love" (p. 12), the "relationship" appears to have
been one-sided.
Lastly, the language in the brief seems sarcastic and punitive in some places, e.g.,
"Plaintiff's contention that her credibility was 'seriously
damaged' by the exclusion of the fact that she complained to UCLA is absurd.
Her credibility was damaged, all right, but by far more obvious factors"
-wage@wage.org-