Cleared of Prostitution Charges, Does Southern Owe Greg LaFleur?
Written by HBCU Digest, Posted in Legal, Louisiana, Southern University, Sports
Former Southern University athletic director Greg LaFleur told a Louisiana district judge yesterday that the school breached his contract when it fired him three days after his arrest last April for alleged solicitation of a prostitute.
LaFleur is seeking damages and his base salary for the remainder of a contract initially inked through 2013. He was found not guilty of the charges earlier this year, but Southern says that LaFleur didn’t appeal his firing, despite being given a 30-day window to do so and being paid up until May 6.
Timing is the major issue here. LaFleur gets busted in a prostitution sting, and is fired three days later. Hookers didn’t cost him his job, it was a suffering Southern sports program. The arrest was the reason the SU Board was looking for, but may inevitably turn out to be a hasty reaction to an otherwise justifiable dismissal.
Another question – between LaFleur and ongoing court cases with Ralph Slaughter, is it a popular pasttime in Baton Rouge to sue Southern?
The threshold question is whether the contract with Southern gave Gregg a right to work absent some appropriate cause. If he was fired without cause with such a contract Southern appears to have breached. Southern could not then justify the breach after the fact .
If Gregg was an at will employee Southern is clearly right on the contract issue.
But separate and apart from that the EEOC has stated that “arrests” should not be the basis of an employment decision. If the arrest precipitated the firing Gregg may still be able to argue this was “discrimination.”
Regardless of the legal ramifications it was outrageous for Southern to simply presume guilt and throw their athletic director under the bus. Today most criminal charges are dismissed. Today police in urban areas are evaluated on whether they have made a certain number of arrests. The program is called Comstat. In response police are sometimes hyper aggressive. Gregg was acquitted in less than a half an hour. It may be because the police acted without probable cause to arrest in the first place. Gregg may have been profiled twice, once by the police and once again by his employer