[2006alum]

There's an amazing amount of speculation in this thread based on very little information. We haven't seen the complaint, the contract, the written severance ​agreement if any, Stanford's filings in response, etc. All we have is one newspaper story based on Dawkins' statement to the press and another from Stanford. And Stanford's said they hadn't seen the complaint yet.

+1. I've worked for a judge who was fairly prominent and whose decisions were reported on relatively regularly - the media's capacity to utterly bungle reporting on a lawsuit is impressive. From describing the arguments wrong, to incorrectly explaining the significance, to literally just getting the basic facts incorrect, I have come to trust almost no legal reporters. Adam Liptak for NY Times is very good, as is Josh Gerstein for Politico. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern for Slate are also good, although they're more opinion-y in their writing. That's about it for regular legal reporting, I'm afraid to say. The rest is pretty garbage.

I'd recommend waiting until the complaint comes out and then StanfordMatt or someone else qualified can translate. I also wouldn't trust what either party's counsel says to the media, and therefore what the media is reporting, because the PR spin purposefully twists and distorts the arguments and the facts, and the media often buys it wholesale. It's not irrational to mislead, either, because the court of public opinion also counts. See what happened to O'Reilly. Therefore counsel on both sides have an incentive to spin within an inch of an outright lie.

[2006alum]

There's an amazing amount of speculation in this thread based on very little information. We haven't seen the complaint, the contract, the written severance ​agreement if any, Stanford's filings in response, etc. All we have is one newspaper story based on Dawkins' statement to the press and another from Stanford. And Stanford's said they hadn't seen the complaint yet.

+1. I've worked for a judge who was fairly prominent and whose decisions were reported on relatively regularly - the media's capacity to utterly bungle reporting on a lawsuit is impressive. From describing the arguments wrong, to incorrectly explaining the significance, to literally just getting the basic facts incorrect, I have come to trust almost no legal reporters. Adam Liptak for NY Times is very good, as is Josh Gerstein for Politico. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern for Slate are also good, although they're more opinion-y in their writing. That's about it for regular legal reporting, I'm afraid to say. The rest is pretty garbage.

I'd recommend waiting until the complaint comes out and then StanfordMatt or someone else qualified can translate. I also wouldn't trust what either party's counsel says to the media, and therefore what the media is reporting, because the PR spin purposefully twists and distorts the arguments and the facts, and the media often buys it wholesale. It's not irrational to mislead, either, because the court of public opinion also counts. See what happened to O'Reilly. Therefore counsel on both sides have an incentive to spin within an inch of an outright lie.