U.ordered to pay damages in age bias suit

Former Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania employee Janet Smithgall won her age discrimination lawsuit against the University last month in Federal District Court. A jury awarded Smithgall $70,000 in damages after ruling that the University had breached its contract with Smithgall. At the same time, the jury denied Smithgall's claim that the University discriminated against her because of her age and retaliated against her after she filed the age bias complaint. The jury announced its decision on Dec. 17, after a week-long trial in Eastern Pennsylvania District Court, and already, lawyers for the University have filed post-trial motions asking Judge James Joyner to reverse the jury's decision. "There is no basis, in law or in fact, for that verdict," said Hope Comisky, the University's outside attorney in the case. Depending on Joyner's decision, the University may also chose to appeal the decision. An appeal must be filed within 30 days of the decision. In the suit, Smithgall claimed that when the University discharged her from her research job at HUP in 1989, they told her there was no longer funding for her position. But, three days later, her suit alleged, HUP hired a 23-year old female to perform her former job. Smithgall then filed an age discrimination complaint which was referred to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In early 1990, the University and Smithgall signed a settlement agreement which allowed her to return to work, but after ten months, she filed the current suit. Smithgall said when she returned to work, her job description was changed "so as to exclude all professional duties?[reducing] her position to that of a clerk." In the University's defense, lawyers claimed that Smithgall, by not accepting a job offer at the Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institution, had not mitigated her damages in the case. But, according to Smithgall's lawyer Glenn Clark, the jury said she had effectively mitigated her damages. Clark cited 16 job applications filled out by Smithgall for jobs within and outside of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania as evidence of his claim. Clark also said that Smithgall had accepted a six-month temporary job as an assistant nutritionist after she left the University.Charges against Wharton prof. may be reinstated By BETH TRITTER Daily Pennsylvanian Staff Writer Criminal charges against Wharton Marketing Professor Scott Ward, which were initially dropped in November, may soon be reinstated, Assistant Montgomery County District Attorney Chris Maloney said yesterday. Maloney said Ward has been rearrested on charges of criminal attempts to commit corruption of minors, prostitution and deviant sexual intercourse. Ward was arrested on October 1, 1993 after allegedly soliciting sex from an undercover police officer posing as a 15-year-old boy. He was originally charged both in that incident and in a case involving a 17-year-old boy's claim that he and Ward had sexual contact beginning when the boy was 13. District Judge Caroline Stine postponed sending the first case to Common Pleas Court, because the microphone planted on the officer in the sting operation failed to record the conversation between Ward and the officer. Maloney said yesterday the District Attorney's office disagreed with the judge's ruling "in good faith," and chose to rearrest Ward on those charges. "We are entitled to file charges again and to ask for a new district justice [to preside at a new hearing]," he said. Stine, he added, has "refused herself" from the case, giving another judge, who has not made a previous ruling on the issue, the opportunity to preside over the charges. Ward faces a $25,000 fine and 10 to 20 years in prison if he is convicted of statutory rape, the most serious charge against him. Maloney said the District Attorney's office is unsure when a new district judge will be assigned to the case, but he expects the reassignment and a subsequent hearing "soon." Ward, who teaches Wharton graduate courses, is still on the University faculty and can only be dismissed if he is found guilty by the county and if a subsequent University investigation were to reveal that the crimes warrant dismissal.