The Eastern Echo had a story the other day about Fallon’s lawsuit being dismissed, and it raised a wrinkle/issue I hadn’t heard much about previously:
Faupel said the Fallon family is currently without income due to the university’s illegal discrimination against his wife in violation of the Elliott Larsen Civil Rights Act.
According to Faupel, Fallon’s initial contract draft stated that his wife, Dr. Sidney Fallon, could not obtain employment at EMU.
[Fallon’s attorney Marion] Faupel said the stipulation had been removed from the contract at Fallon’s request before he began his role as president, but that the chairman and vice-chairman of the board at that time told him that it was still enforceable.
She said this left Sidney Fallon without a job, and when John Fallon was fired, left the Fallons without income.
According to university records, John Fallon received $233,289 for the 2007 tax year.
I had vaguely heard this about Sidney Fallon before, but I guess I don’t quite understand why it is coming up again. Is this part of the lawsuit? Is this an angle that Faupel is trying to spin as to why her client is being wronged?
It seems kind of weird to me. For starters, I really think that if the Fallons had pressed the issue and if there was a position for Sidney Fallon that was appropriate at EMU, I am guessing she could have been employed. But is it conceivable that she would have kept her job, whatever it was, after her husband got canned? And besides that, she couldn’t get a job anywhere else?
Oh, and I have a hard time working up a lot of sympathy for a couple who made just shy of a quarter of a million last year. They probably aren’t going hungry.
My understanding of this, Steve, is that the Fallons alleged in their lawsuit against EMU that a provision of the initial draft contract between John A. Fallon III and EMU that would have forbidden Fallon’s wife from being employed at EMU, constituted gender discrimination. Their argument falls apart on the simple fact that the actual contract between EMU and Fallon contained no such provision….No attempt to enforce this absurd idea was made, but Fallon’s lawsuit was nothing but a scattershot attempt to harm EMU and extort money from Eastern students. It’s legalistic mud slinging, nothing more, and the judge found Fallon’s case all without merit.
Yet Fallon’s lawsuit was based on the belief that EMU would cave in and pay him off, as has so often been done for failed administrators here who were forced out. Fallon himself fired one VP and then later agreed to an expensive out of court settlment with her. He and his lawyer tried to shake down EMU, and they failed. They had no case. He should have been countersued, in my view, for every penny of the extensive damages he inflicted on EMU thru his failure to do his duties.