PORTLAND, Maine — The Maine Supreme Judicial Court will be asked to decide whether an international fraternity can be held legally responsible for an assault that occurred at its University of Maine chapter.
The case could have ripple effects by setting a precedent by which — if followed nationally — parent fraternities could be held liable for the actions of hundreds of chapters and thousands of members.
The Maine case, which centers on a 2010 incident at Delta Tau Delta’s Gamma Nu Chapter at the University of Maine campus in Orono, represents the second recent case seeking to punish Delta Tau Delta Fraternity Inc. for what takes place at its individual campus chapters.
In July, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled in a separate case that Delta Tau Delta couldn’t be held liable for the death of a Wabash College student who died during an alleged hazing incident at a chapter in that state.
An attorney representing the victim of an assault at the UMaine chapter of the fraternity is asking Maine’s highest court to overturn a Penobscot County Superior Court decision freeing Delta Tau Delta from legal responsibility.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court will hear oral arguments in the appeal on Wednesday in Portland. Also named as a defendant in the case is Delta Tau Delta National Housing Corp., the entity that legally owns the chapter fraternity house at 111 E. College Ave. in Orono.
According to court filings in the case, the assault took place at a party at the chapter on Sept. 17, 2010, when local member Joshua Clukey allegedly shoved a female guest onto his bed, made sexual advances and tried to prevent her from leaving.
After about 10 minutes, the guest escaped the room with minor injuries, the Delta Tau Delta brief states, and later reached an out-of-court settlement with Clukey. Clukey, the victim’s attorney wrote, entered a guilty plea on charges of simple assault and furnishing alcohol to a minor.
Westbrook attorney Thomas Douglas, representing the victim in the case, wrote in his filing to Maine’s high court that Delta Tau Delta imposes a detailed code of conduct and membership responsibility guidelines upon its local chapters.
The Bangor Daily News is not naming the woman represented by Douglas in the complaint to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court because she is the victim of a crime.
In his testimony, the Gamma Nu Chapter president said Clukey consumed excessive amounts of alcohol, got into fights with fellow chapter brothers and damaged the fraternity house during multiple incidents in the weeks before the assault, Douglas notes. The attorney argued that each of those incidents should have been logged as a Level II violation of Delta Tau Delta membership responsibility guidelines.
“If [Delta Tau Delta] had disciplined Clukey for his violent behavior and excessive alcohol consumption in the weeks immediately prior to the assault as mandated by its own rules and code of conduct, the assault on [the plaintiff] likely would not have occurred,” Douglas wrote.
“Instead, [Delta Tau Delta’s] failure to enforce its own rules allowed Clukey to remain a member of the fraternity and a resident of the fraternity house, where he continued to behave inappropriately in the days and weeks leading up to his assault on [the plaintiff],” the attorney continued in a separate court filing.
Douglas is urging the state’s highest court to throw out the Superior Court’s summary judgment in favor of Delta Tau Delta and remand the case back to Superior Court for trial.
Portland attorneys Wendell Large, Carol Eisenberg and Joseph Cahoon are representing Delta Tau Delta in the case.
In their brief, filed with the state supreme court, the fraternity’s lawyers argue Douglas has overblown the level of oversight the national organization has over its local chapters.
“The Gamma Nu Chapter of DTD is a self governing, unincorporated association of undergraduate students at [UMaine],” the attorneys representing Delta Tau Delta wrote, in part. “The international organization does not handle the affairs of the local chapters. … The international organization did not plan, sponsor or require any events at the Gamma Nu Chapter of the DTD on the night of Sept. 17, 2010. No officers or employees of the international organization, all of whom work in Indiana, were present at the Gamma Nu Chapter of the DTD or on the [UMaine] campus on the night Sept. 17, 2010.”
The fraternity also is arguing that when the victim reached a settlement with Clukey, the deal effectively cut off liability for the international organization as well.
“The vast majority of jurisdictions that have examined the issue have determined that national fraternal organizations do not assume duties to persons in the fraternity homes of local chapters,” the fraternity brief continued, in part. “There is no reason to depart from this well-reasoned position under the facts of the present case.”