Settlement reached in former IPFW chancellor's lawsuit
FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) - Attorneys for Purdue University say the school has settled a federal lawsuit over the forced retirement of Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne's former chancellor.
The school's attorneys said in Monday court filing Monday that Michael Wartell's lawsuit "has now been resolved," but that filing included no details of the settlement.
Messages left Tuesday seeking comment from Purdue's attorneys and Wartell's attorney, Blake Hike, were not immediately returned.
But Wartell's attorneys told The Journal Gazette they had no further comment on the matter.
Wartell was forced to retire in 2011 at age 65 under a mandatory retirement age policy he alleges was not enforced against any other senior administrator.
Purdue replaced him with a 64-year-old woman, Vicky Carwein, and she assumed his duties in September 2012.
Wartell sued Purdue in federal and Tippecanoe County court in 2013, claiming discrimination and harassment by the university under Cordova.
His federal suit states that in late 2010 or early 2011, then-Purdue President France Cordova announced in a meeting that, before her term as president was over, she wanted to increase the number of women in the school's administration.
Purdue oversees the 13,000-student Fort Wayne campus, which Wartell had led for 18 years. The Purdue trustees turned down a resolution from the IPFW Senate asking that Wartell be allowed to stay on until the school's 50th anniversary in 2014.
The settlement ends years of wrangling over a report prepared by an attorney who investigated Wartell's removal, The Journal Gazette reported (http://bit.ly/1KnBRHU ).
Purdue officials fought to keep secret that report, which was completed in February 2013 by an attorney who turned it over to a group of Purdue board members. They found that no discrimination had taken place.
Purdue refused to make the document available to Wartell's attorneys, citing attorney-client privilege and claiming the document was not a public record.
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Information from: The Journal Gazette, http://www.journalgazette.net