Chicago trial lawyer Dan K. Webb — who has represented the famous, the infamous and the legendary for decades — is figuratively calling a flag on the play regarding the latest news erupting in Northwestern University’s hazing scandal.
Last month, Webb, 77, a former U.S. attorney in Chicago before becoming a famed defense lawyer, took on a new client: Pat Fitzgerald, the Northwestern University football coach who was suspended and then fired in the wake of revelations about hazing.
But when Northwestern hired former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and her law firm in recent days to do a complete review of the procedures in place to detect player misconduct and hazing in the football program, Webb responded in an exclusive interview with Sneed by saying: “It’s a complete waste of money.
“If this case ever goes to trial, I will put on the witness stand a leading expert in football due-diligence programs to detect hazing and misconduct — and explain to the jury that Coach Fitzgerald had already put in place an outstanding due-diligence program to do just that — already viewed as one of the best one in the country.
“They have hired somebody to do something they’ve already done,” Webb said. “It’s a total waste of the university’s financial resources.”
Webb was out of town on vacation when he got a call from Fitzgerald last month seeking his counsel.
“Pat Fitzgerald is a legend,” he said, “one of the best-known college football coaches in the country. When he called me, I jumped at the chance.”
Webb said firing Fitzgerald was “not only a violation of his written employment contract with the university but also a violation of a recently entered-into oral contract agreement with the university that Fitzgerald would only be suspended for two weeks … and not terminated. Period.”
Since then, all hell has broken loose in the cloudy haze of the hazing scandal, with lawsuits filed by Northwestern football players against the university over accusations of hazing and racial abuse.
They were followed by a dramatic statement from former latino Northwestern football lineman Ramon Diaz, 36, who said “Cinco de Mayo” had been shaved onto the back of his head during a hazing episode. Diaz said abusive treatment ultimately pushed him in 2006 to attempt to kill himself by overdosing on painkillers. He is now a clinical psychologist.
Webb said one of the steps included in Fitzgerald’s plan to ferret out player hazing is an annual survey each football player was required to fill out.
“Coach Fitzgerald insisted on the survey being done anonymously and without retribution,” Webb said.
He said Fitzgerald’s anti-hazing and player abuse program involved “multiple steps, including anonymous player interviews carried out annually to absolutely detect any football player hazing.”
“During the many years Coach Fitzgerald was in charge of the football programs, no evidence of hazing was ever turned up when he was coach,” Webb said. “And termination of Coach Fitzgerald a few weeks ago for cause was based on a statement by Northwestern President [Michael Schill] with no evidence Coach Fitzgerald actually knew about the hazing.”
Stay tuned.
Rahm and Barbie
…. and Oppenheimer: Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, now the U.S. ambassador to Japan, hit the “Barbie” movie when it premiered in Tokyo with his wife Amy and daughter Leah.
“Yes, a lot of people were wearing pink,” chirped the ex-mayor, who said his wife was even wearing a pink dress.
It’s a small world: “I know the film’s director, Greta Gerwig, whose publicist is the sister-in-law of Jonathan Sacks, who was one of my City Hall speech-writers,” Emanuel said. “So we had a lot to chat about at the movie’s premiere amidst doing some high-fives.”
It’s no secret the hit film “Oppenheimer,” a nuclear era film, is not yet playing in Japan due to promotional film images, and memes of “Barbie” pink infused with nuclear bomb explosions met with Japanese anger in a nation devastated by U.S nuclear attacks that ended World War II’s Pacific fighting.
”I read the Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘Oppenheimer’ book when it first came out,” Emanuel said. “It was a fabulous biography. But personal knowledge here of the dangers of nuclear weapons are very real.”
P.S. — Feeling some Chicago homesickness, Emanuel streamed the hit Hulu series “The Bear” when it premiered last year and recently watched all of season two in a single week.
Sneedlings
A private memorial service for Rocky Wirtz, the Blackhawks owner who died suddenly late last month at Evanston Hospital, will be held in the coming week at Fourth Presbyterian Church. … Saturday birthdays: NBA player Anthony Edwards, 22, actor Jesse Williams, 42, and former New York Knicks star Patrick Ewing, 61. Sunday birthdays: actor Leslie Odom Jr. 42, actress Vera Farmiga, 50, and actress Michelle Yeoh, 62.
