- The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is asking a judge to dismiss three of four claims for relief in former provost Chris Clemens’ lawsuit against the university.
- Court filings Thursday argue that Clemens’ suit “fails to understand what rights North Carolina law creates and what remedies it provides.”
- Clemens alleges that university trustees misused the Signal messaging app to evade state public records and open meetings requirements.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is asking a judge to dismiss three of four claims in a former provost’s lawsuit against the university. Chris Clemens accuses university leaders of misusing the Signal messaging app to evade state public records and open meetings requirements.
“The North Carolina Public Records Act and Open Meetings Law provide citizens with the right to ensure they have access to the records and deliberations of public bodies as well as remedies that can be levied against public bodies for failing to honor those rights,” lawyers representing the university and its Board of Trustees wrote Thursday. “The fundamental flaw with the Verified Complaint is that it fails to understand what rights North Carolina law creates and what remedies it provides.”
Clemens “claims that the Defendants violated North Carolina’s Public Records Act by destroying public records without having bothered to request those same records as is required under the Public Records Act,” UNC-CH leaders’ court filing continued. “He invents a claim out of whole cloth that Defendants have a ‘pattern and practice’ of violating North Carolina’s Open Meetings Law. He attempts, through clever drafting, to avoid black-letter North Carolina law regarding what constitutes an ‘official meeting’ under the Open Meetings Law. And finally, he requests remedies for these purported violations of the Public Records Act and the Open Meetings Law that wildly exceed what the law allows.”…