Liberty University sued its former president, Jerry Falwell Jr., for $10 million.
Falwell breached his contract and fiduciary duty while president and withheld potentially damaging information from the university’s board of trustees while negotiating a new contract for himself in 2019 under false pretenses, the lawsuit alleged.
Falwell deceived the board into redesigning his contract to include a higher severance payout if he were to resign for “good reason” or if Liberty terminated his contract without cause, the lawsuit claimed. Falwell claimed that this would serve as a “safety valve” for him and the university if his support of former President Donald Trump became a liability to the school’s reputation.
Falwell, whose father founded the university and served as president until 2007, was suspended in August 2020 as the president of the Lynchburg, Virginia-based Christian institution after he became engrossed in a series of public scandals, one of which included his posting of a photo of himself online with his pants unzipped at a “costume party.”
That incident occurred in the context of a settlement Falwell had reached in a lawsuit related to purported sexually compromising photos involving him, his wife, and a “pool boy” the two had met at a Miami Beach hotel.
On Aug. 23, 2020, Falwell revealed in an exclusive statement to the Washington Examiner that his wife Becki had an “inappropriate personal relationship” with the pool attendant, saying that it was short-lived and that she and him had reconciled.
Liberty pursued an independent investigation into school operations during Falwell’s tenure, and the parties went their separate ways.
“This past week challenged all of us to the core,” Liberty University’s executive committee, acting on behalf of its board of trustees, said in a statement alongside the investigation announcement in August 2020. “While we had been willing to extend grace and understanding to Jerry Falwell, Jr. before, once the revelations about his past personal life came more fully to light, we acted swiftly and decisively to ask for his immediate resignation, which we received.”
Falwell left the university at the end of August 2020 but said it was “completely false” that he resigned.
The suit against Falwell claimed that the reason he was negotiating a deal was to protect himself against the possibility that Giancarlo Granda, the pool attendant, would publicly reveal his affair with his wife.
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Falwell filed his own suit against the university in October 2020, claiming defamation and breach of contract.
Liberty University spokesman Scott Lamb told the Washington Examiner, “The University’s only word on the subject is the lawsuit itself.”
“The Executive Committee of the Liberty University Board of Trustees has made yet another attempt to defame me and discredit my record,” Falwell said in a statement obtained by NPR. “This lawsuit is full of lies and half truths, and I assure you that I will defend myself against it with conviction.”
