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Conspiracies
Topic Started: Mar 29 2011, 05:55 PM (338 Views)
Quasimodo

Ekstrand's response to Gottlieb's Motion to Dismiss:


Quote:
 
B. The Amended Complaint States a Civil Conspiracy Claim Against Defendant Gottlieb.

A cause of action for civil conspiracy arises whenever an injury is caused by "a wrongful act ... committed by one or more of the conspirators pursuant to the common scheme and in furtherance of the objective."

To state a claim for civil conspiracy a plaintiff must allege (1) a conspiracy, (2) wrongful acts done by certain of the alleged conspirators in furtherance of that conspiracy, and (3) injury as a result of that conspiracy.

A conspiracy, under North Carolina law, is an agreement, express or implied, between two or more persons to commit an unlawful act or to do a lawful act in an unlawful manner.

Where a conspiracy is established, all conspirators are jointly and severally liable for acts done in furtherance of the agreement by any one of them.

The Amended Complaint alleges sufficient facts showing Gottlieb's participation in (1) multiple conspiracies; (2) wrongful acts done in furtherance of them; and (3) injury caused by those acts in furtherance of them, including but not limited to:

an overarching conspiracy to stigmatize the Plaintiffs in conjunction with multiple deprivations of Plaintiffs' significant interests for purposes of depriving Plaintiffs of a fair, impartial jury;

several conspiracies to conceal exculpatory, tangible, testimonial, and forensic evidence,

several conspiracies to manufacture inculpatory tangible, testimonial, and forensic evidence;

conspiracies to abuse multiple forms of legal process;

conspiracies to invade the Plaintiffs' federally protected private financial, banking, communications, and educational records and accounts without legal cause,

and an overarching conspiracy not to intervene among all Defendants who had the power to prevent the wrongs conspired to be done to Plaintiffs over the course of 13 months,

in which Defendant Gottlieb participated,

and (2) numerous acts of Defendant Gottlieb's co-conspirators in furtherance of the conspiracy that caused injury to Plaintiffs.


Taken together, these allegations are sufficient to withstand a motion to dismiss.

Gottlieb contends that Plaintiffs will not be able make good the allegations of the conspiracies alleged. However, that contention "is of no concern now." Ridgeway Brands Mfg., 2008 WL 3915186 at * 10 (citing Muse, 66 S.E.2d at 785).

Plaintiffs' allegations entitle them to an opportunity to do sotheir day in court. Therefore, Defendant Gottlieb's Motion to Dismiss Plaintiffs civil conspiracy claims must be denied.
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Quasimodo

Ekstrand response to the SANE motion:


Quote:
 
And there is more. The Amended Complaint recounts in detail Levicy's fabrication of medical records to support the fabrication that she agreed to make for Gottlieb, Himan, and Nifong to use in obtaining the NTID Order and McFadyen Warrant.

On April 5, 2006, Levicy produced a second installment of the material portions of the SAER to Himan with a multitude of falsifications made to conform to the evidence known to Levicy at the time. These included:

A fabricated transcript of Levicy’s interview of Mangum with strike-outs and other addenda.

A falsified medical record of Mangum's SAE with revisions and annotations to Mangum's contemporaneous responses on the pre-printed SAER forms

Levicy's original notation, "no," was struck through, and the (formerly empty) "yes" blank was checked.

A handwritten notation near the revision states, "wiped her off with a rag." (a towel containing semen had been seized during the search of 610 N. Buchanan.


The next day, on April 6th, Mangum gave her first (and only) written statement in the case. She wrote an account remarkably consistent with the SAER interview transcript Levicy gave Himan the day before.

In a move transparently designed to conform her account to the existent evidence of semen found by police in the bathroom, in the case, Mangum writes an "add-on" paragraph at the end of her statement. The add-on paragraph reads, in toto, "I would like to add that Adam ejaculated in my mouth and I spit it out onto the floor, part of it fell onto the floor [scratch out] after he pulled his penis out." This “add-on” was suggested to Mangum to harmonize her statement with Levicy’s fabrication.

... These are specific facts that trace the outlines of a chilling conspiracy between Duke University and the City of Durham to convict Plaintiffs as principals or accomplices in a crime that never happened
. The falsifications in the SAER were plainly designed to fabricate a forensic medical record of things that did not happen, responses Mangum never gave, and evidence that did not exist, all designed to corroborate the sensationalized version of Mangum's account that Gottlieb falsely reported in his factual sections of the application for the NTID Order.
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Quasimodo

Ekstrand's response to the SANE motion:

Quote:
 


A statement may be both evidence of a conspiracy and an act in furtherance of a conspiracy.


Arico’s statements are both.


Arico’s statements were in furtherance of the conspiracy because they infused an incompetent, unqualified SANE-in-Training (Levicy) and her fabrications with the University’s credibility.


The AC [Amended Complaint] alleges Arico made these public statements pursuant to the Chairman’s Directive, under the supervision of the Medical Center’s senior policymaking official and CMT member, Chancellor Dzau. The Chairman and the Chancellor both subsequently ratified Arico and Levicy’s misconduct by failing to correct, reprimand, reeducate, or terminate either of them.

Even Levicy, as late as the Summer of 2007, testified that she was a SANE still employed by Duke University.

(snip)

The AC alleges that these Defendants conspired with enforcement officers they knew to be corrupt by agreeing to provide—and then providing—fabricated forensic evidence for the purpose of supporting the applications for judicial authorization thereby causing Plaintiffs to be subjected to searches and seizures without probable cause. In doing so, the SANE Defendants encouraged, aided, and engaged in overt acts in furtherance of an unlawful conspiracy that caused Plaintiffs to be subjected to unreasonable searches and seizures.
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Quasimodo

Original Ekstrand complaint:

Quote:
 


638.From this point [March 29] forward, the City's purposes coincided completely with those fixed for the University by the Chairman; what was "best for Duke" was also best for the City. Shortly thereafter, the City, Duke, and NCCU launched a media campaign, called "A Community of One." It was designed to promote the image of the City, Duke, and NCCU all standing in solidarity against the white, "racist-rapists" on the lacrosse team. The media campaign culminated on the day of the first indictments with a large "Community of One" ad placed strategically in various newspapers.

639.All appearances of a legitimate investigation were abandoned, and replaced by a conspiracy whose final object was to prosecute and convict Plaintiffs and/or their teammates in the absence of probable cause, reasonable suspicion, or factual possibility for that matter, in violation of Plaintiffs' constitutional rights.

640.In furtherance of that conspiracy, multiple conspiracies emerged, including but not limited to: an overarching conspiracy to stigmatize the Plaintiffs in conjunction with multiple deprivations of Plaintiffs' significant interests for purposes of depriving Plaintiffs of a fair, impartial jury;

several conspiracies to conceal exculpatory tangible, testimonial, and forensic evidence, several conspiracies to manufacture inculpatory tangible, testimonial, and forensic evidence;

conspiracies to abuse multiple forms of legal process;

conspiracies to invade the Plaintiffs' federally protected private financial, banking, communications, and educational records and accounts without legal cause,

and an overarching conspiracy not to intervene among all Defendants who had the power to prevent the wrongs they knew were conspired to be done to Plaintiffs over the course of the next year
Edited by Quasimodo, Mar 29 2011, 06:08 PM.
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Quasimodo

Quote:
 


At this preliminary stage, with respect to the civil rights conspiracy allegations, it is the law of this circuit that it is enough for a plaintiff to allege facts showing that the defendants entered into “an agreement or a meeting of the minds” and shared “the general conspiratorial objective” to violate their constitutional rights

(snip)

Burness may not save himself from the claim by asserting, as he does, that his claim that Plaintiffs “were capable of rape” was “made more than a year after the earliest deprivation, because the AC alleges that Burness was making that statement from the beginning, at every opportunity, to anyone who would publish it without attributing it to him specifically.

The AC’s allegation that he is still saying it as the Attorney General declares no sexual assault or assault of any kind ever happened simply makes the point that he is—inexplicably—working from the same talking points he, Brodhead, Steel, and the CMT concocted in the first days of the ordeal.

Likewise, Burness’s contention, that the “stonewall of silence” myth he and his co-defendants created was not only connected to the deprivation of Plaintiffs’ right not to speak and to be free of retaliation for exercising it; the myth of a “stone wall of silence” was, in fact, one of the means used to coerce Plaintiffs’ to submit to Gottlieb’s questioning and to retaliate against them for not doing so.


(btw, Plaintiffs "have alleged" such a conspiracy, as above; if that is "enough" and the "law of this circuit",
then where is the sanction of the court to proceed with discovery?)
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Quasimodo

Quote:
 


1198. After it the Attorney General publicly exonerated Plaintiffs and declared that no crime had ever occurred, Steel, Brodhead, Dzau, Burness, Lange, Moneta, Graves, Dean, Wasiolek, individually and collectively, obstructed public justice by making plans to conceal their participation in the conspiracies alleged herein.

By way of example, after the conspiracies disbanded in January, 2007, Moneta sent an email to a list of senior University administrators requesting that the recipients meet with him immediately for the express purpose of the stated purpose of fabricating a uniform explanation for their conduct, or, in Moneta’s words, “get[ing their] stories straight.

Moneta also directed the recipients of his email to destroy the email immediately. The purpose of that and other efforts by University officials with policymaking authority with respect to the investigation of Mangum’s claims was to defeat or diminish the award of damages in civil actions they assumed would be brought against them and the University by Plaintiffs and/or their teammates.

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Quasimodo

Quote:
 


629.Gottlieb and Himan failed to take (or produce in discovery) any notes they may have taken at any of the meetings they attended with the Duke-Durham Joint Command Staff or the Durham Command Staff. This was a practice in keeping with their failure to take or produce notes of meetings held with other co-conspirators, including Mangum, Nifong, Meehan, Clark, Levicy, Arico, Ripberger, Lamb, Hodge and Baker. The sum total of Gottlieb's notes taken in meetings with their co-conspirators are three words-"discussed the case"-to describe the meeting in which Meehan and Clark advised Nifong, Gottlieb, and Himan of DNASI's exonerating test results, and the meeting in which they all conspired to deprive Plaintiffs of their absolute right to those results.



Why would no one take any notes, ever--especially when standard procedure for officers involved
in an investigation is to keep extensive notes and document everything (with photos were necessary)?


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