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Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Ind. Law - Liquor wholesalers launch attack on IU Law professor

Lesley Stedman Weidenbener of the Louisville Courier Journal has a story today headlined "IU reviews professor's outside legal work: Some have criticized role in winery lawsuits." Some quotes from the story:

Indiana University has opened an internal investigation to determine if one of its law professors improperly used state resources or time for lawsuits aimed at allowing winery shipments across the country.

Professor Alex Tanford, who teaches at IU's Bloomington campus, said he has worked within university rules and said his outside litigation work for small wineries and people seeking to buy wines from them has enhanced his teaching.

But critics -- including some legislative leaders -- are concerned that his focus on the lawsuits may have come at the expense of his job, and they say it's not fair that his suit against the state could result in Indiana taxpayers paying his legal fees.

"I think it's totally inappropriate for a state employee to be pursuing things on behalf of an outside client and trying to get paid on the state taxpayers' nickel to do it," said Senate President Pro Tem David Long, R-Fort Wayne. * * *

Long, who was active in legislative efforts to change Indiana's winery law to comply with the Supreme Court decision, told IU School of Law Dean Lauren Robel last year he was concerned about Tanford's actions and had questions about whether he was working on state time.

But a packet of information that the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of Indiana -- one of Tanford's opponents in court -- recently provided to an IU lobbyist led Robel last week to request the internal audit.

"First, they claim that Professor Tanford used state resources to pursue this litigation," Robel wrote to the university's internal audit department. "Second, they appear to claim that Professor Tanford violated conflict-of-commitment rules at the university."

Those rules spell out the kinds and amount of non-university work in which professors can engage.

The Indiana wholesalers group opposes deregulation of alcohol sales and is fighting Tanford, a wine enthusiast who wants small wineries to have the right to ship their products to customers nationwide.

More from the story:
Tanford said in an interview with The Courier-Journal last week that any assertion he hasn't kept up with his responsibilities as a professor is "ridiculous." He said Robel and other school officials have been aware of his work and that his time has not exceeded that allowed by the university for outside activities.

According to the IU academic handbook, professors are allowed to spend 20 percent of their time -- essentially one day a week -- pursuing "professional, but not necessarily university, activities."

Tanford said he keeps detailed time records and can prove he has not overcommitted to outside work. He said he's provided information about his work in annual reports he makes to the university and has "done nothing in secret."

"No one ever raised a question or suggested that I'm doing anything inappropriate, wrong, illegal in violation of my contract," Tanford said.

Tanford said he uses his own computer and cell phone for outside work. He acknowledged he has sometimes had to cancel classes but said his lectures are available on the Internet and that he builds in extra class days to cover cancellations.

Critics point to a Web site on the IU server that provides details of the wine cases.

And Daniel Meyer, general counsel for the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of Kentucky that is opposing Tanford's case in the state, said he was surprised to get correspondence in IU envelopes.

Here is the "website" - last updated in 2005. I've often wished it was more current. Re the use of "IU envelopes" - perhaps Prof. Tanford should go to Staples and get some envelopes printed up, but his return address would still be Indiana University.

As I understand it, Tanford is engaged in litigation to benefit small wineries in Indiana and other states, aimed at contesting the legality of state laws and rules that favor liquor wholesalers. And I'm not at all clear precisely what Indiana lawsuit(s) the liquor wholesalers are complaining about. As IU's own faculty website says about the professor:

Professor Tanford is also involved in civil liberties issues. He has taught constitutional litigation and written several books and articles on the Establishment Clause and civil liberties in cyberspace. He is a cooperating attorney with the ACLU, and has handled more than a dozen cases at the trial and appellate level. He is currently co-counsel in a series of constitutional cases challenging state laws that prohibit ordering wine over the Internet.
Finally, Tanford is a litigation professor. The LCJ story concludes:
Robel, in a letter sent to Long last year, said Tanford's use of school resources was "minimal and incidental" and that no students have participated in Tanford's cases.

However, Tanford said last week that while he has not assigned course work pertaining to the cases, some students have volunteered to help and he has paid others for work outside of class.

"I teach modern litigation," Tanford said. "So I have to be doing some litigation just to be able to teach the students what's going on in federal court procedure right now."

__________
What would Harvard do? Remember Reversal of Fortune: "Alan Dershowitz a brilliant professor of law is hired by wealthy socialite Claus von Bulow to attempt to overturn his two convictions for attempted murder of his extremely wealthy wife. Based on a true story the film concentrates not on the trial like other legal thrillers, but on the preparatory work that Dershowitz and his students put in as they attempt to disprove the prosecution's case and achieve the Reversal of Fortune of the title."

See also the website Free the Grapes! , which states on its front page: "A wine war is pitting consumers -- who want the option to purchase wines directly from wineries and retailers -- against the wine wholesaler cartel, who are threatening consumers and winemakers with jail time if they bypass the middleman."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 4, 2007 08:40 AM
Posted to Indiana Law