What was the first? what did you do?

In the first case I exposed a county secession network.

More on the Mill case here.

Wow, Edwards (university counsel) was a little nervous there, eh?

Edwards was new to the case. It seemed pretty obvious that he started to figure out Western's counsel (Wendy Boehlke who sat behind him) had lied to him about things like the federally protected student records. I had to laugh when the justice asked him to name some of the protected records and he couldn't.

In a nutshell, this is a whistle-blower case. Funds were embezzled by the department chair, Mark Kuntz. The university conducted an audit, with Kuntz as a member of the audit panel. It was a whitewash based on blatant falsehoods, mostly intended to delay. Then they released the audit and immediately tried to fire Mills.

So there were these stages:
1) $20,000 is embezzled over several years
2) Mills reports the missing funds to the auditor and the whitewash is dragged out for a year
3) Mills is suspended for false allegations brought by the embezzler and his cronies in the whitewash
4) Mills has to sue in federal court to get university to disclose the reason for his suspension (that took another year)
5) then the university holds this secret kangaroo court (from which I am barred as a reporter)
6) then the president and board of trustees reject the findings of the hearing and still try to fire Mills
7) the faculty hearing panel refuses to knuckle under
9) then the university extends Mills suspension for an additional year under the lie that there is no office space available anywhere on campus
10) Mills sues in Superior Court over the irregularities of the hearing and the local judge, Stephen Mura, totally boots the case and states during his ruling that he knows he is intentionally introducing grounds for appeal (basically saying he's booting it upstairs to appeals)
11) the appellate court totally overturns Mura's farce and awards costs and fees to Mills while remanding the issue back to the university to try again
12) the university appeals the ruling to the state Supreme Court (this takes another two years).... and here we are twelve years later and the controversy is really no closer to getting resolved.

Even if Mills prevails here, all it means is he will be awarded some portion of his costs and they get to do it to him all over again. He can't counter sue until this mess comes to a halt and even if it goes his way, he's only half-way. If the court finds for the university, then he can counter sue sooner, but it's all such a crap shoot. Mills legal fees have run into five figures.

This is the longest, most pointless case anybody out here has seen. And it is unlikely to reach a conclusion anytime soon.