Troy Brown is finally set to get his day in court Monday for his lawsuit claiming that Mississippi Valley State University officials wrongly fired him from his position as an assistant dean there.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Neal Biggers Jr. denied a last-minute motion for dismissal from the defendants, MVSU President Lester C. Newman and Kevin C. Rolle, the school's former vice president of student affairs.
Biggers will hear the case beginning at 9:30 a.m. Monday in federal court in Oxford.
In the lawsuit, Brown, 40, contends that he was fired because he refused to withdraw from the 1999 lieutenant governor's race. The suit says the defendants originally encouraged Brown's candidacy but changed their attitude about it when he took a leave of absence to campaign.
Brown eventually lost in the Democratic primary to current Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck.
When the suit was filed later that year, it included Mississippi Valley State, Greenwood attorney Lee Abraham Jr. and other, unnamed defendants. But the university is immune from damages in federal court, and through nearly four years of legal wrangling, Brown dismissed everyone except Newman and Rolle.
Brown, now a self-employed landscaper, is asking for unspecified damages. His attorney, Jim Waide of Tupelo, says Brown will also ask to be reinstated as assistant dean of student affairs if the jury rules in his favor.
Newman was out of the office Friday, meeting with attorneys in preparation for the trial.
Dr. Roy C. Hudson, MVSU vice president for university relations, said that Newman has not been able to devote much attention to the case because he has been focusing on the start of the fall term, Valley's record-setting enrollment and the challenges it has created.
"He has put the interests of the university and the students first," Hudson said.
The lawsuit, he said, has been a distraction to the staff, some of whom have had to spend considerable time pulling records and other documentation in preparation for the trial.
"I think that the university and the principals in the case are working toward the better good of the university - that is, trying to serve our students," Hudson said. "That's been our operating principle all along, to put the university first, and that's what we will stand on when we go to trial."
In their motion Friday, Newman and Rolle said Brown has not shown material fact that they conspired to have him fired. "They contend they did not renew Brown's contract because he did not respond to and provide for the needs and welfare of an MVSU student and her 1-year-old child after the student's campus apartment was destroyed by fire," Biggers' denial of the motion stated.
Also, Newman "asserts that he had concerns from the outset about the plaintiff's ability to lead student affairs and to perform the work assigned," the ruling said.
In the lawsuit, Brown rejects those and other accusations of poor job performance as false.
Biggers determined that Brown has presented enough "genuine issues of material fact" to bring Newman and Rolle to trial.
Waide said the trial could go all week.
"I would expect it to last at least four days or maybe all week," he said.
