Northwestern students will likely be asked to give depositions or testify in court if a defeated aldermanic candidate’s lawsuit against Northwestern goes to trial, her lawyer said Tuesday.
Judy Fiske sued NU on Thursday, alleging that the university bribed students to vote in April’s aldermanic election. Fiske lost the First Ward seat to Ald. Cheryl Wollin (1st). The suit asks that the election results be overturned.
The complaint focuses on an election-night party intended only for students who voted and on preferred-housing points that residential colleges allegedly granted student voters, said Fiske’s lawyer, Richard Means.
A hearing in the Cook County Circuit Court on June 14 will determine whether the case belongs in the court or in Evanston City Council. If the judge decides to have the case tried in court, there will be a period of several weeks in which the defendants — Northwestern, Wollin and several Evanston officials — can ask for the suit’s dismissal.
Assuming the suit is not thrown out, it will proceed to the discovery stage, in which depositions from students will be taken.
“If the students of course are away for the summer we might go to wherever they are.” said Means, Law ’68. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the case went on with students who are coming back in September.”
The suit lists the names of more than 200 students but Means said it would be too expensive for each student to provide a deposition. Rather, he said, he will look through university records to ascertain which students were most active in the election.
“I would fully expect to have depositions of people who administered the housing preference program,” Means said.
On Monday, William Banis, NU’s vice president for student affairs, sent an e-mail to First Ward student voters, reassuring them that they are not defendants in the lawsuit.
“Northwestern University will defend itself vigorously against the allegations of this lawsuit,” Banis wrote. “It will also fight to maintain the integrity of your vote.”
Frederic Artwick, the lawyer who will represent NU in the suit, said he has begun investigating the complaint and the legal basis behind it. NU has not yet decided if it will ask for the suit to be dismissed, though NU officials believe the claims are without merit, Artwick said.
“I think it’s unfortunate that the students’ names are included in the complaint,” Artwick said. “It looks on the face of the complaint that someone’s trying to intimidate them or discourage them from participating in the electoral cause.”
Means said if the case goes to trial, he will “research this thing to death.”
“There is always a risk with a very large institution like Northwestern that they will simply try to outspend us and outwork us,” Means said. “It won’t work in this case. We’ll just match them.”
Wollin, who would lose her part-time job if Fiske’s lawsuit succeeds, released a statement Monday in which she expressed confidence that the judicial process will affirm her victory.
“This appears to be another step in some long-standing vendetta against Northwestern University,” part of her statement said.
Reach Greg Hafkin at [email protected].
