Lacrosse Player Sues Duke

Jan. 5, 2007 — -- In the first of a potential series of legal actions against Duke University, a former lacrosse player filed a civil lawsuit today, claiming a Duke professor failed him because of accusations by a hired dancer that she'd been sexually assaulted at a team party last March.

The university apparently revised the grade upward months after student athlete Kyle Dowd graduated last spring, according to a copy of the court filings obtained by ABC News Law & Justice Unit. Dowd has not been accused of any crimes relating to the alleged lacrosse party assault.

The papers were filed a day after indicted students Colin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann were invited to return to the school following a semester-long suspension following their indictments last spring on charges they'd attacked and sexually assaulted the woman.

The professor, Kim Curtis, said, "I have nothing to say" [about the suit] when reached at her home in North Carolina. Duke University officials said they had not yet seen the court papers and declined to comment.

While the suit won't affect pending charges against Seligmann, Finnerty and David Evans, it is the first salvo in what's expected to be a raft of legal actions against the school.

"When this is over, every possible step will be taken, and we will explore every possible way against every person involved to redress the harm that has been done," Joseph Chesire, a defense attorney who represents Evans, told ABC News Tuesday. Evans was indicted the day after he graduated last spring.

There is widespread sentiment among parents and friends of the 2006 Duke lacrosse team that the university faculty and administrators handled the accusations against its students badly and failed to stand by lacrosse team members as they came under fire from within and outside campus.

Last May a comprehensive report on the school's reaction to the allegations commissioned by university president Richard Brodhead found that there'd been a "major failure in communications" within the Duke administration in the days following the alleged attack. Brodhead did not even learn of the accusations until a week after the March 13 party, from a story in the campus newspaper.