Carmody v. Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, No. 16-1335 (7th Cir. 2018)
Annotate this CaseThe University fired Carmody, an information technology manager, after printed copies of a professor’s privileged emails suspiciously ended up in Carmody’s home newspaper box. The emails allegedly exposed inconsistencies in the professor’s testimony in Carmody's separate lawsuit against a different professor. The University learned about the mysterious delivery because Carmody’s lawyer filed the emails with the court. The University concluded that it was “more probable than not” that Carmody improperly obtained the emails himself. Carmody sued the board of trustees and officials alleging that he was fired without due process of law both and that his firing violated an Illinois whistleblower statute. The district court dismissed the case. In an earlier appeal, the Seventh Circuit held that Carmody had pleaded a plausible claim that he was fired without pre-termination due process, but that his decision to withdraw from the post-termination hearing foreclosed his due process claim based on the post-termination procedures and affirmed the dismissal of the state-law claim. On remand, the district court granted summary judgment for some defendants and Carmody lost at trial on his claim against three remaining defendants. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. Carmody did not establish that the individual defendants bore responsibility for his alleged deprivations. The Eleventh Amendment bars the claims against the board and 42 U.S.C. 1983 does not authorize such claims.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.