Former ECU Chancellor Cecil Staton sues UNC System and former board chair over his exit
Former East Carolina University Chancellor Cecil Staton is suing the UNC System over his departure from the Greenville university last year.
The lawsuit also names former UNC System Board of Governors chairman Harry Smith, attorney Peter Romary and his firm QVerity.
Staton claims that his resignation in 2019 resulted from a dispute with Smith, not from poor performance, and that Smith used his position on the board to undermine Staton’s leadership.
In the complaint, Staton says his “decades-long career was the casualty of a long-running irrational and obsessive vendetta” held by Smith. Staton says Smith “waged a callous misinformation campaign” against Staton in a “flagrant abuse of his power and the public trust” that was “condoned and ratified” by UNC System leadership, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also alleges that former UNC System President Margaret Spellings told Staton that she was “under enormous pressure” from Smith to fire Staton and that her job was threatened if she refused to fire him.
Staton claims the vendetta arose when he “rejected an unethical business proposal” involving off-campus housing from Smith shortly after Staton became chancellor at ECU.
At the time of Staton’s departure, Board of Governors member Steve Long said Smith had wanted to get rid of Staton because he turned down that deal, which would have required some ECU students to live in housing that Smith wanted to develop, The News & Observer previously reported. Long also argued that interim UNC System President Bill Roper’s decision to get rid of Staton was based on politics.
Support from people connected to ECU
In January, before Staton was asked to step down, dozens of people connected to ECU signed a letter supporting Staton and asked UNC system leaders to show Staton’s recent performance evaluation as proof that he was doing well as chancellor.
When Staton’s resignation from ECU was announced he told reporters, “Let me just simply say: I did not initiate this,” The News & Observer previously reported.
The lawsuit also alleges that Smith, Romary and his firm QVerity “prepared, published and disseminated” a memo and a dossier on Staton that hurt his reputation by outlining several concerns about his time as ECU chancellor. The anonymous online dossier called the hiring of Staton at ECU “gross negligence.” Staton’s complaint states those documents took him out of the running for jobs, including at a university in Texas.
Romary was also involved in the investigation into former ECU interim Chancellor Dan Gerlach, who replaced Staton, that ultimately led Gerlach to resign.
With this lawsuit, Staton is seeking compensatory damages and punitive damages for his losses, “to punish defendants’ acts, and to deter future abuses of the public trust and the illicit wielding of government-sponsored power.”
Harry Smith’s response
Smith, a Greenville businessman who unexpectedly stepped down from the board in 2019, is an ECU alumnus who was criticized for overstepping and micromanaging in his position on the board, particularly at his alma mater. Smith has maintained that he was not involved in Staton’s departure.
In response to the lawsuit, Smith said in a statement that he had “no knowledge or involvement in the dossier in any way,” and said it’s widely known that it was authored by an ex-ECU professor.
Smith also said that he had no knowledge that Staton was in any job interviews and “would never do anything to harm Cecil in any job endeavor, I wish him nothing but success.”
In his statement, Smith said he never disparaged Staton or the ECU Board of Trustees and that he focused on academic and fiscal performance metrics to measure the success of university leaders.
“I support any process that produces facts and look forward to that,” Smith said.
UNC System spokesman Jason Tyson said the UNC System does not comment on pending litigation.
This story was originally published June 22, 2020 at 4:56 PM with the headline "Former ECU Chancellor Cecil Staton sues UNC System and former board chair over his exit."
