Jury selection for Penn’s second chance at a federal lawsuit case began on June 14.
Previously withheld evidence is expected to be presented in the trial, which heads into its third day today. According to court documents Penn believes the evidence may have been tampered with in the original trial.
On Oct. 18, 2005, ex-student Frank Reynolds filed a suit against Penn for breach of contract, claiming that the University would not give him a Wharton degree after having promised him affiliation with Wharton upon completion of the Executive Masters in Technology Management program. A federal jury for the United States District Court for Pennsylvania’s eastern district awarded Reynolds $435,678 on Oct. 6, 2009.
But on Jan. 27, presiding Judge Thomas O’Neill ordered a new trial, citing possible alteration of evidence submitted by Reynolds. On June 2, O’Neill denied a request from Reynolds to exclude this evidence from the trial.
Comparisons of Penn’s and Reynolds’ copies of documents such as PowerPoint slides turned up inconsistencies, including a Wharton logo in one slide that didn’t exist until after Reynolds would have gotten the slide. Subsequent inspections of data sources led Penn to believe the evidence was altered.
However, when former classmate Anurag Harsh dropped a similar lawsuit that used the same evidence, Reynolds was granted a motion to exclude the evidence before the original trial as it may have reflected poorly on his case.
“Upon reconsideration, I find that the introduction of the allegedly altered documents would not create a side issue. Instead, that evidence is directly relevant to the jury’s determination of Reynolds’s credibility,” O’Neill wrote in his Jan. 27 order granting the new trial.
Reynolds alleged in his complaint that he was led to believe he would receive a degree from Wharton before the University told EMTM students that they would be considered graduates of the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Dwight Jaggard, director of the EMTM program, stated for a Feb. 11 article of The Daily Pennsylvanian that since its start in 1988, students of the program “receive a masters degree in engineering (MSE degree) and a certificate signed by the deans of Penn Engineering and the Wharton School.”
Ron Ozio, director for media relations at Penn, declined to comment on the pending litigation.
