Lisa M. Gilford

Gilford beat down a series of lawsuits against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that targeted the school for allegedly offering “sham” classes to student athletes.

In three suits, former students who attended UNC on athletic scholarships alleged that the independent study classes they took were devoid of educational content. They sued the school for breaching its contract and duties with the student-athletes by denying them a high-quality education.

For Gilford, there were two significant legal issues at play in the matters.

“One was that the decision turned on the University of North Carolina’s status as a state institution,” she said.

To this end, she argued that the school couldn’t be sued for these claims because it was protected by sovereign immunity under the 11th Amendment. The court went through an exhaustive analysis of UNC’s status as an alter ego of the state, which she said had important ramifications for public universities across the country.

The other critical legal question essentially concerned whether a school can be sued for educational malpractice.

The plaintiffs argued that they received a lower-quality educational experience than their peers because they weren’t supervised in their independent study courses. But Gilford noted that the plaintiffs in her cases all had high grades and graduated with degrees. They also waited several years after graduating to file their grievances, which further undermined the suits.

“Schools don’t want to be held liable for people feeling that their education or their degree wasn’t as valuable as they wanted it to be,” Gilford said. “That very quickly becomes something that goes down a slippery slope.”

In January 2017, Gilford successfully convinced a panel of three judges on the North Carolina Court of Appeals to affirm a trial court’s dismissal of one of the educational malpractice suits. In March 2017, a North Carolina court dismissed a suit, McAdoo v. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in its entirety after finding that the school was indeed the alter ego of North Carolina.

The court dismissed a third related complaint, McCants et al v. The National Collegiate Athletic Association et al., in January for failure to state a claim.

“It was a real pleasure and honor to work for the university,” Gilford said. “I was very honored to represent them in these cases.”

— Eli Wolfe