Since the KnightNews.com lawsuit was filed against UCF back in February, UCF has been fighting answering whether they admit or deny each allegation in the open government lawsuit.
President John C. Hitt’s lawyers — Rick Mitchell and Jason Zimmerman of GrayRobinson — have even threatened KnightNews.com with crippling financial sanctions if the case was not dropped.
The lawsuit stems from the public’s right to oversee UCF’s secret organizational hazing hearings and to monitor how UCF is spending public money.
Whether or not UCF would have to take responsibility and answer the allegations came down to a hearing last Wednesday — where Judge Patricia Doherty ordered UCF to admit or deny everything in the lawsuit by Monday.
UCF went on the offensive back in June by filing both a motion to dismiss and motion for summary judgment. The judge decided not to hear the motion for summary judgment, denied the motion to dismiss and issued an alternative writ of mandamus to UCF, essentially asking them to produce the unredacted public records, or else prove why they do not have to. In addition to the alternative writ, the judge also ordered UCF to respond to lawsuit.
However, even though the judge ordered UCF’s lawyers to respond to the lawsuit back in June, they instead filed another motion for summary judgment, trying to throw out the entire case again without answering the allegations.
KnightNews.com’s lawyer set a hearing last Wednesday so the judge could address the failure to properly answer the lawsuit.
During the hearing, the judge told the UCF lawyer that an answer would be required and questioned the UCF lawyer when he argued that it wasn’t.
“The reason I’m asking though is we have had a hearing on a motion to dismiss and I entered an order requiring a response within 20 days, and it was my intent that you would answer that,” said Judge Doherty.
In other words, the judge made it clear that the complaint needed to be answered and maneuvers to get the case thrown out without an answer are done.
After UCF’s lawyer realized that a proper answer to the lawsuit needed to be submitted, he asked the judge about how KnightNews.com’s lawyer resorted to filing for a motion for default. The motion for default, simply put, says that the defendant has not properly answered the case and the plantiff could automatically win the lawsuit.
KnightNews.com’s lawyer asserted that he filed the motion hoping to get the answer KnightNews.com was entitled to.
“Nonetheless, a motion for default is the vehicle through which we brought this issue to the Court and by which we hope the result is an answer in response to our complaint, seven, eight, nine months after it was filed,” said KnightNews.com lawyer Justin Hemlepp.
The motion for default was denied, but the judge ordered UCF to respond to the complaint in return.
KnightNews.com reached out to UCF for a comment on why they threatened a non-profit student news organization with crippling sanctions, but they did not directly respond to the question.
