Lawyer for sexual abuse victims blasts panel for denying appeal in $680M lawsuit filed against Yeshiva University

NEW YORK
New York Daily News

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

BY MICHAEL O’KEEFFE

The lawyer for 34 men who claim Yeshiva University covered up decades of sexual abuse picked a fight on Tuesday with the appeals panel that shot down a $680 million lawsuit last week, accusing the three judges who denied his appeal of being in the tank for the Washington Heights school.

Attorney Kevin Mulhearn didn’t pull any punches in papers filed on Tuesday asking the full Second Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear the case.

“The panel decision mocks the law, ignores the facts, insults the survivors of childhood sexual abuse and diminishes the dignity and integrity of this court,” Mulhearn wrote. “The panel decision is grossly flawed, intellectually dishonest and antithetical to well-settled Supreme Court and Second Circuit jurisprudence.”

Mulhearn called out three Second Circuit judges who upheld U.S. District Court Judge John G. Koeltl’s decision to toss the case, accusing them of acting as attorneys and advocates for Yeshiva rather than as objective jurists.

“If the Second Circuit Court upholds the panel decision, it will diminish its own honor and prestige,” Mulhearn said, accusing the panel of acting like a “a kangaroo court.”

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