Gordon Klein v. UCLA Trial Update – Dean’s Cross-Examination Continues, Supervisor Testifies

Gordon Klein v. UCLA Trial Update – Dean’s Cross-Examination Continues, Supervisor Testifies

The trial continued in the case of Prof. Gordon Klein versus the UC Regents and UCLA business school dean Antonio Bernardo. Legal Insurrection has been following the dispute since inception. Our prior trial reports are here:

• Trial Starts In Suit Against UCLA By Prof. Gordon Klein, Targeted and Smeared For Refusing Exam “Leniency” For Black Students
• Gordon Klein v. UCLA Trial Update – Expert and Student Take The Stand
• Gordon Klein v. UCLA Trial Update – Cross of Prof. Klein Wraps Up, Dean Bernardo Takes The Stand

Court resumed on July 11 with a witness called out of order. Plaintiff called Judson Caskey as an adverse witness. Though he recently transferred to Purdue University, Caskey served as director of the UCLA Anderson Accounting Minor Department and was Prof. Klein’s direct supervisor from 2015 to 2024. One of Caskey’s roles was to make recommendations about awarding merit raises to the lecturers, including Prof. Klein.

Caskey testified that the standard for merit raises is “excellence in teaching,” though he admitted to having written in an email that such raises were “virtually guaranteed.” He explained that his job was to make a recommendation to the voting committee on whether to award a merit raise and that the voting committee would vote on it. Counsel stated that another professor, Steven Lippman, stated in deposition that he sat in on all voting sessions and provided the final write-up either granting or denying merit raises and that Caskey’s recommendation was “dispositive” of the outcome.

Caskey stated that in 2018 he sent an email to the voting committee recommending that Prof. Klein be granted a merit raise. In it he wrote that Prof. Klein “consistently performed well in teaching our business law and tax courses.”

At the next merit review held in 2021, Caskey did not recommend Prof. Klein for a merit raise. He stated that Prof. Klein’s teaching was still good and that he received good scores on student evaluations, but that he was deficient in a few areas: his accessibility in office hours, how he conducted exams, and that he should have provided additional practice and graded items. Caskey could not demonstrate that Prof. Klein provided fewer practice and graded items since his last merit raise evaluation in 2018, in which he was awarded a raise.

Counsel, in suggesting that Caskey’s 2021 recommendation to deny Prof. Klein a merit raise appeared to have been based on factors unrelated to “excellence in teaching,” but rather directly related to Prof. Klein’s email reply to Giovanny in 2020, presented Caskey’s email to the voting committee recommending against a merit raise in which he mentioned the Giovanny incident four times. Nevertheless, Caskey claimed that the denial of the merit raise had nothing to do with the Giovanny email incident.

In 2024, Prof. Klein was recommended for a merit raise by Caskey’s replacement.

UCLA’s counsel, McDonough, examined Caskey next. Caskey clarified that his role as director was to comment on teaching performance, that he had the de facto authority to hire, but “zero control” over firing. Caskey, in reference to “excellence in teaching,” said that teaching includes out-of-class time and the quality of materials, not just teaching.

Asked his impression of Prof. Klein’s email reply to Giovanny in June 2020, Caskey said he was not opposed to the decision to deny the student’s request but described the message as “snarky.”

Caskey stated that he had told Prof. Klein to stop using an offensive case example in class, but that Prof. Klein continued to use it anyway. The case, Caskey said, presented the question of whether strippers are entitled to a tax deduction for breast augmentation surgery. Caskey stated that the use of such an example is in bad taste and that Prof. Klein could find a different case to illustrate the point.

Caskey said that he once received a complaint from a student that Prof. Klein made an offensive comment toward the female students in his class. Caskey said that Prof. Klein told the female students that they should shop for shoes at Nordstrom.

On redirect, Caskey admitted that no student ever complained of Prof. Klein’s use of the stripper case example. Caskey also conceded that the example is a reported case that illustrates the difference between business and personal expenses. In that case, the plaintiff did not simply undergo cosmetic surgery but rather altered her body to such an extreme degree that she was able to establish that it was for a business purpose. Caskey disagreed that if Prof. Klein thought the case was the best vehicle to convey the legal principles he was teaching that he had the right to use the case example as a matter of academic freedom.

Caskey did not seem to know that the student who complained about the Nordstrom shoe comment only reported the complaint after she had failed Prof. Klein’s class and was not allowed to withdraw from the course, seemingly in retaliation for her request to withdraw having been denied.

Asked if considering that Giovanny’s email request for special treatment of Black students called for Prof. Klein to violate the university code of conduct, would he not give latitude to Prof. Klein in reacting in a snarky manner, Caskey said he would not and offered that “there are other ways to do it.”

Thereafter, Plaintiff continued questioning Dean Bernardo.

Dean Bernardo said that he concluded the tweet of a screenshot where Prof. Klein referred to some students as “favorites” was “creepy” and that it had sexual overtones, even without knowing the context of the conversation it was extracted from. He admitted that he never spoke to the student who posted the tweet. Dean Bernardo acknowledged that on June 3, 2020, the day after the email exchange between Giovanny and Prof. Klein, the Anderson School reported “inappropriate behavior” by Prof. Klein to UCLA’s Title IX Office based on the tweet, even though no student ever reported it to the school. Despite having contacted two students about the tweet who said they had nothing to say about it, the Title IX Office determined that it would take no action against Prof. Klein.

On that same night, Dean Bernardo and between three and six other university administrators participated in a Zoom call to discuss possible disciplinary action against Prof. Klein. Among the items discussed was an old rumor that was spread by a fellow professor who had died more than 10 years prior that in the 1990’s there was a file that contained information about Prof. Klein. No one had ever seen this mysterious file, knew where it was, what was in it, or if it even ever existed.

Asked what went into his decision to suspend Prof. Klein, Dean Bernardo listed: 1) the email reply to Giovanny’s request for race-based treatment for his Black classmates, 2) the tweeted screenshot of a portion of Prof. Klein’s March 2020 email in which he referred to five students as “favorites,” and 3) the Discrimination Prevention Office’s representation that it had received over 200 emailed complaints against Prof. Klein. Dean Bernardo said that he was not sure whether the 200 emails related to the same complaint or whether there were additional unrelated complaints against Prof. Klein among them. Dean Bernardo claimed that he put Prof. Klein on involuntary administrative leave because he needed to “take a pause” to assess the situation. Asked whether the rumor he was told about the file from the 1990s was among the reasons for the suspension, Dean Bernardo replied, “I’m not sure what you mean by reasons.”

Dean Bernardo’s testimony will continue later in the case.

The trial will resume on July 22.

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Tasha Gailys is a retired courtroom lawyer who sits in on trials every chance she gets. An alumna of UCLA, she currently lives in Austin, Texas.

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