Doe v. Gerken Complaint
Doe v. Gerken Complaint
Doe v. Gerken Complaint
John G. Balestriere
Matthew W. Schmidt
BALESTRIERE FARIELLO
225 Broadway, 29th Floor
New York, New York 10007
Telephone: (212) 374-5401
Facsimile: (212) 208-2613
[email protected]
[email protected]
Attorneys for Plaintiffs
Andrew B. Bowman
LAW OFFICES OF ANDREW B. BOWMAN
1804 Post Road East
Westport, Connecticut 06880
Telephone: (202) 259-0599
[email protected]
Attorneys for Plaintiffs
– against – COMPLAINT
Defendants.
Plaintiffs Jane Doe (“Jane”) and John Doe (“John”) by their attorneys, Balestriere
Fariello, for their Complaint against Defendants Heather Gerken (“Gerken”), Ellen
Cosgrove (“Cosgrove”), Yaseen Eldik (“Eldik”), and Yale University (“Yale” or the
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PRELIMINARY STATEMENT
1. Two Yale Law School deans, along with Yale Law School’s Director of
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, worked together in an attempt to blackball two students of
color from job opportunities as retaliation for refusing to lie to support the University’s
2. Gerken, Yale Law School’s Dean, and Cosgrove, the Associate Dean,
approached an esteemed law professor and expert in constitutional law, and discouraged
the professor—who already employed Jane and John as long-term research assistants—
from hiring Jane and John as so-called “Coker Fellows,” prestigious teaching assistant
positions that often lead to federal clerkships and other lucrative career opportunities.
for Plaintiffs Jane and John’s reporting a harassing and defamatory report (the “Dossier,”
Ex. A) 1, which was compiled and circulated by another law student and related to
Plaintiffs’ private interactions with a high-profile Yale Law School Professor, Amy Chua
(“Chua”).
4. The Dossier, which Defendants disseminated, placed Jane and John at the
1The attached exhibit is redacted to reflect Plaintiffs’ pseudonyms, and Defendants have already been
provided an unredacted version.
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Cosgrove and Eldik pressured Jane and John to make knowingly and materially false
the professor and telling him that he should not hire Jane and John because of their “lack
of candor,” despite Plaintiffs’ steadfast refusal to lie to further the University’s crusade
against Chua.
circulating a document full of lies to Plaintiffs’ employer and professor, but they also
neither Jane nor John applied for clerkships, fearing that the administration would make
good on its threats to ensure that every judge sees the Dossier.
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10. This Court has diversity jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1332 because
this action is between citizens of different states, and the amount in controversy exceeds
PARTIES
Plaintiffs
12. Jane is a natural person who has completed her second year at the Yale Law
School and is currently on a voluntary leave of absence from the school. She is African
13. John is a natural person who has enrolled in his third year at the Yale Law
Defendants
15. Heather Gerken is the current Dean of Yale Law School and, on information
16. Ellen Cosgrove is the Associate Dean of Student Affairs at Yale Law School
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17. Yaseen Eldik is the Director of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion at Yale Law
STATEMENT OF FACTS
Background
18. Like many top law schools, Yale Law School employs a limited grading
scale and does not compute grade point averages, presumably in an attempt to encourage
19. Unlike other elite law schools, Yale Law School, which pioneered this
model in the 1960s, takes the limiting grading scale to its current extreme. All first-term
classes are ungraded and subsequent classes have only three grades: Honors, Pass, and
Low Pass. The Law School does not impose a mandatory curve on its professors.
20. While this system protects what would otherwise be the bottom half of a
law school class, it makes competition tight for its more traditionally ambitious students,
who often seek competitive federal clerkships or other government jobs, whose limited
availability and competitive nature are considered highly prestigious and desirable.
21. This system means that Yale Law School students are in high competition
over non-grade signifiers of merit. For students who entered Yale Law School in Fall
2019, as did Plaintiffs, this competition for non-grade signifiers of merits is heightened,
as the COVID-19 Pandemic caused Yale Law School to drop all grades for Plaintiffs’
entire first year. Plaintiffs’ class has only four semesters of graded credits, unlike students
in “typical” classes of Yale Law School graduates, who have five semesters of graded
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22. One such signifier is the so-called Coker Fellowship, a highly coveted
23. Coker Fellows assist select professors—who each choose two Coker
Fellows—in their teaching of “small groups,” which teach both substantive law, like
24. Small groups are first-year students’ “home bases”: they are designed to
allow the students to form close relationships with at least one professor and with a
cohort of peers with whom they attend every class in their first semester. Many small
groups are extremely tight-knit groups, and all small-group professors take a special
interest in forming deep and meaningful relationships with their Coker Fellows and their
small-group students.
briefs, and other first-term writing projects; providing or coordinating instruction in legal
assignments and programs; counseling members of the small group and helping them
adjust to law school; and arranging social events and visits to courts, agencies, and other
26. Attorneys at firms including Covington & Burling; Cravath, Swaine &
Moore; Wachtell Lipton; Davis Polk; and Jenner & Block, or those who have become
Coker Fellowship, often list the fellowship in their biographies, even decades after
graduation.
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27. The Coker Fellowship also offers a valuable opportunity to work closely
with a respected professor and to build relationships with a group of other Yale Law
Jane and John Begin Their Studies at Yale and Meet Chua
29. Plaintiffs Jane and John enrolled at Yale Law School in the Fall of 2019.
30. After a successful academic year in her first year of law school, Jane met
Chua for the first time in the Spring of 2020 in her International Business Transactions
class. John met Chua for the first time in the Spring of 2021 while also enrolled in her
31. Chua became perhaps the most famous member of the Yale faculty
following the success of her 2011 memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and has served
as an important mentor for her students, many of whom successfully obtain prestigious
clerkships.
year before Jane or John had even enrolled in the law school—during the confirmation
Gerken sent an email to all members of the Yale Law School community (which was
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supposedly against Chua and describing them as “of enormous concern” to Gerken.
34. In her missive, Gerken also directed students who had “been affected by
35. It was subsequently reported in 2019 that Chua had entered a “no-
socializing” agreement with the University whereby she agreed to not socialize with
students off-campus.
36. Starting in February 2021, both Jane and John became embroiled in Gerken
and Cosgrove’s apparent vendetta against Chua. That month, Jane and John separately
37. These office hours discussions would also cover career discussions and any
38. In particular, John struggled with what he felt was a lack of institutional
support for students of color, which ended with his frustrated resignation from the board
of the Yale Law Journal. His resignation received media coverage including on the
popular legal blog (particularly among law students) Above the Law. This caused John
well as being one of the few faculty members of color at Yale Law School, was in a unique
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40. Given the sensitive nature of the subject, John and Jane (who was John’s
friend and had also faced similar hostility) wished to discuss their issues with Chua in
person.
41. To avoid meeting in public to discuss such a sensitive subject, Jane, John,
and Chua decided to meet at Chua’s home, which was a common practice amongst Yale
faculty members. (In fact, Gerken has met with both Jane and John at Gerken’s own
42. John and Jane met Chua twice at her home, in February 2021 and March
2021. Both meetings included only John, Jane, and Chua, and no meals were involved.
The Dossier
43. Unbeknownst to Jane or John at the time, these two meetings somehow
became subject of pernicious law school gossip. One of their classmates went so far as to
compile a bizarre 20-page document, the Dossier (Ex. A), that purported to document the
“secret dinner parties” that Chua was supposedly hosting with John, Jane, and
44. The Dossier eventually gained such wide circulation that it became the
subject of investigative reporting from news outlets including The New Yorker, The New
45. The New Yorker described the Dossier as “extremely thin,” and The New York
Times anonymously quoted “several” Yale Law professors who had told the newspaper
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46. On its face, the Dossier—which refers to Jane and John as “Jane Doe” and
“John Doe” in its main text but identifies them by name through exhibited screenshots of
text messages—claims that Jane and John had “repeatedly lied” about their experience as
students of color at the Law School, and further “repeatedly lied” about the existence of
the secret dinner parties, before supposedly admitting their existence to the Dossier’s
47. As evidence, the Dossier included a number of text messages, some with
Jane or John, none of which consisted of them admitting to any secret dinner parties. On
the contrary, in large part they seemed to consist of the Dossier’s author making his own
claims in text messages—to Jane, John, and other unidentified friends—about the
48. The Dossier also included photos of John’s feet outside in the snow as
“evidence” and denounced Jane and John for “deliberately enabling” a “secret
49. Jane and John became aware of the Dossier in late April 2021, when it had
50. Shortly thereafter, beginning on April 23, 2021, Cosgrove and Eldik
contacted Jane and John concerning the Dossier. However, they were not investigating
the fact that a Yale Law School student was circulating such a document for an apparent
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51. Instead, Cosgrove and Eldik pressured Jane and John to make a formal
statement confirming the allegations against, and lodge their own formal complaint,
against Chua.
52. Despite Jane and John repeatedly denying the Dossier’s assertions,
Cosgrove and Eldik pressured Jane and John to make such a statement, even calling them
on a daily basis over the course of a week in April 2021, insisting that Jane and John had
against Chua.
53. Cosgrove and Eldik also made references to Jane of the “effort against
Professor Chua” and insisted that if Jane would “just give them” a statement, they would
54. During the course of this week, Jane and John consistently refused to make
false statements, and instead repeatedly asked Cosgrove and Eldik for assistance against
the troubling invasion of privacy and resulting harassment that they suffered.
55. Cosgrove and Eldik ignored these requests to help and discouraged Jane
and John from filing a formal complaint concerning the harm the Dossier and its creator
56. Instead, Cosgrove and Eldik ratcheted up the pressure. On a joint call
including Cosgrove, Eldik, and Jane, Eldik told Jane that the Dossier would likely end up
in “every judges’ chambers,” “following [her] even after [she] graduates,” effectively
sabotaging any hopes of her securing a clerkship whether she applied now or in the
future.
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57. In a joint call including Cosgrove, Eldik, and John, Eldik and Cosgrove
strongly suggested that John should not apply for a clerkship in the summer of 2021
58. It was suggested that, for these reasons, Jane and John should cooperate by
59. Cosgrove also directly threatened Jane, claiming that Yale Law School was
receiving complaints about her potentially serving as a Coker Fellow due to the Dossier,
and further suggested that such complaints would be moot if Jane made a statement
against Chua.
60. That threat having no effect, Cosgrove became more direct, telling Jane that
if Jane accepted a Coker Fellowship with the professor—despite Jane’s repeated denials
that she had received an illicit offer from the professor—Cosgrove or another member of
the Yale Law School administration would approach the professor with the allegations.
61. In his own interactions with Cosgrove and Eldik, John unequivocally
denied the Dossier’s claim that the professor had extended him an illicit Coker
Fellowship offer.
62. When John asked Cosgrove and Eldik to help him deal with the false
rumors being spread by other students to the contrary, Cosgrove and Eldik indicated that
they were unaware of any complaints or rumors to that effect—despite having threatened
Jane with those very same rumors and complaints—and insinuated that they would
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63. When John informed Cosgrove and Eldik about his concerns regarding the
lies and misrepresentations included in the Dossier, it was suggested to John that unless
he filed a complaint against Chua, the administration could not effectively protect him
Gerken’s Retaliation
64. In April 2021, Defendant Gerken became personally involved in the efforts
65. Gerken’s direct involvement began when Jane, who was a student in
Gerken’s academic clinic and was then writing a lengthy paper under Gerken’s direct
and personal supervision, sought Gerken’s advice in dealing with the Dossier.
66. While it later became apparent that Gerken was fully aware of the Dossier,
Gerken advised Jane to “be candid” with Cosgrove and Eldik and faculty members who
may hear of the Dossier. Jane in response explained to Gerken that the allegations in the
Dossier were false and questioned why her own candor was at issue.
67. A few days thereafter, Gerken and Cosgrove personally approached the
professor, who was in the process of hiring Coker Fellows for his small group, with the
intent to induce the professor to decline to extend a fellowship to either Jane or John.
68. The purpose of Gerken and Cosgrove’s approach to the professor was to
not only dissuade him from offering a Coker Fellowship to Jane and John, but to convince
him that Jane and John were lying about their interactions with Chua, making them
untrustworthy and unsuited for employment, despite the professor already employing
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69. In the course of this attempt, Gerken and Cosgrove brought with them a
copy of the Dossier that Cosgrove had personally marked up with highlighting and
annotations to show where Cosgrove believed that Jane and John were lying. Cosgrove
did not try to investigate the specific allegations contained in the Dossier with Jane or
John, even though they repeatedly informed her that it was full of lies and
misrepresentations.
defines as “any adverse action taken against a person who has reported a concern, filed
71. The actions of Gerken, Cosgrove, and Eldik caused significant harm to Jane
and John.
Jane has taken a leave of absence from Yale Law School due to the ongoing harassment
73. Given the false accusations, both Jane and John did not apply for any
judicial clerkships, and their ability to form and maintain relationships with their peers
74. Moreover, because of Defendants’ misconduct, both Jane and John have
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CAUSES OF ACTION
75. Plaintiffs reallege and incorporate each and every one of the above
76. In Fall 2019 and Fall 2020, Jane and John entered into a binding contract, the
explicitly agreed not to retaliate against students who make harassment complaints.
77. The Handbook defines retaliation as “any adverse action taken against a
dissuade him from offering a Coker Fellowship to Jane and John because they refused to
79. Defendants, by retaliating against Jane and John, breached their contract
80. Plaintiffs reallege and incorporate each and every one of the above
81. Defendants made a clear and definite promise to Jane and John that they
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82. Jane and John relied on Defendants’ promise and requested assistance from
Cosgrove and Eldik regarding the invasion of privacy and resulting harassment that they
83. Defendants ignored these requests to help, discouraged Jane and John from
filing any sort of formal complaint, and then retaliated against Jane and John.
84. Plaintiffs reallege and incorporate each and every one of the above
85. Jane and John, as law students, had a prospective relationship with Yale’s
professors and judges’ chambers around the country. Defendants, however, intentionally
86. Defendants threatened Jane that the Dossier would likely end up in “every
judges’ chambers,” sabotaging any hopes of her securing a clerkship unless she
87. Defendants also approached the professor to dissuade him from offering a
Coker Fellowship to Jane and John because they refused to make statements against
Chua.
88. As such, both Jane and John lost the Coker Fellowship, and will potentially
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89. Plaintiffs reallege and incorporate each and every one of the above
90. Defendants shared and stated numerous false statements defaming Jane
and John to third parties. The defamatory statements include the sharing of a document—
the Dossier—that Defendants knew or reasonably should have known was defamatory.
93. These defamatory statements served no legitimate purpose and were made
94. These false statements disparaged Jane and John in their profession or
trade. Accordingly, these statements constitute defamation per se, and injury is
presumed.
95. In addition, Plaintiffs, who are not public figures, lost the Coker Fellowship
97. Plaintiffs reallege and incorporate each and every one of the above
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98. Defendants broadcast matters concerning the private lives of Jane and John
99. Those matters were not a matter of a legitimate concern to the public.
100. Jane and John have suffered injury as a result of Defendants’ acts.
101. Plaintiffs reallege and incorporate each and every one of the above
102. Defendants have placed Jane and John in a false light which would be
of the publicized matters and the false light in which Jane and John would be placed.
105. Plaintiffs reallege and incorporate each and every one of the above
agents, was intended to cause Jane and John severe emotional distress in that they knew
or should have known that the University’s retaliation against students would likely cause
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107. Indeed, Defendants’ conduct caused both Jane and John to suffer extreme
and outrageous conduct, Jane and John sustained and continue to experience emotional
distress, pain and suffering, inconvenience and loss of enjoyment of life stemming from
Defendants’ retaliation.
109. In fact, Jane and John will continue to suffer in the future emotional distress,
pain and suffering, inconvenience and loss of enjoyment of life as they seek legal
at least $75,000;
$75,000;
E. Investigation costs;
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Plaintiffs respectfully demand a trial by jury for all issues so triable in this action.
John G. Balestriere
Matthew W. Schmidt
BALESTRIERE FARIELLO
225 Broadway, 29th Floor
New York, New York 10007
Telephone: (212) 374-5401
Facsimile: (212) 208-2613
[email protected]
[email protected]
Attorneys for Plaintiffs
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