A Syracuse University professor is suing six New York state Supreme Court justices and a law firm representing the university, claiming that the parties committed such egregious fraud that it could be compared to the Watergate scandal and the conspiracy surrounding the energy giant Enron.

The justices are now calling for the lawsuit to be dismissed.

The 177-paged lawsuit, filed with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York, also names SU, former Vice Chancellor and Provost Eric Spina, Melvin Stith, former dean of the Whitman School of Management, former Whitman associate dean Randal Elder and associate accounting professor Susan Albring.

David Harris, an accounting professor, filed the lawsuit after his first case was dismissed in Onondaga County Supreme Court in 2013 and his appeal was overturned in June this year.

In that case, Harris sued the university, then-Chancellor Nancy Cantor, Spina, Stith, Albring and Elder.

Harris alleged he was shunned after claiming Albring gave students “excessively high” course grades and that the tenure process was rigged. He sought several kinds of damages for defamation, breach of contract, discrimination, retaliation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Justice Brian DeJoseph later threw out the 2013 lawsuit after ruling the claims did not stand. Harris, who is representing himself, is now suing DeJoseph, as well as five other justices in the appellate division: Rose Sconiers, Henry Scudder, Edward Carni, Joseph Valentino and Gerald Whalen.

New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed a document Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York arguing that the claims against the justices should be dismissed on several grounds: the lawsuit was improperly served to the Appellate Division’s office, the complaint is too long, the judge had immunity in his decisions as part of his job and federal courts have no jurisdiction over state decisions.

In his original lawsuit against SU, Harris requested that DeJoseph excuse himself from the case due to bias, which DeJoseph denied. Harris also asked that the case be reheard, claiming that the defendants and their lawyer committed perjury. DeJoseph deemed the motion baseless.

Harris argued that the parties committed perjury when they “factually misstated” one of his claims. The defendants included a statement saying Harris had never mentioned suffering damages from defamatory statements, according to court documents. Harris said he noted in his complaint that he suffered “special damages” from the statements, including his termination as chair of the Lubin School of Accounting in Whitman.

“They said I never wrote it in my complaint,” Harris said. “It was like Franz Kafka meets Alice in Wonderland, like they didn’t know what was going on.”

He also argues that DeJoseph knowingly incorporated the allegedly false statement of fact into the court’s opinion, constituting fraud and bias, he said.

Harris said he believes the fraud claims now outweigh the original claims of discrimination and defamation, among others. He said he decided to move to federal court because he had exhausted all his options in state court and that “the judges lied.”

Ward, Greenberg, Heller & Reidy, the firm representing SU who is also a defendant in the most recent case, was not immediately available for comment. Albring, the accounting professor, declined to comment for this story.

Kevin Quinn, SU’s senior vice president for public affairs, said the cases are a drain on both SU’s and taxpayer’s money.

“It’s unfortunate that despite losing his previous case in state court on the merits, this individual is wasting university and taxpayer dollars to file the same exact suit in federal court,” Quinn said.

Quinn said he doesn’t know exactly how much the lawsuits have cost SU, but that the amount is “substantial.”

Harris is a tenured professor at the university and teaches ACC 385: “Principles of Taxation.”

Published on November 17, 2015 at 10:54 pm

Contact Annie: apalme05@syr.edu