Former U-M Faculty Member Convicted of Felony Sexual Assault, Sues U-M for Sex Discrimination and Breach of Contract

by P.D. Lesko

David Daniels, a former tenured faculty member in the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance, filed suit in the Michigan Court of Claims on March 5, 2025. Daniels alleged (1) Breach of Contract, (2) Breach of Implied Contract, and (3) Sex Discrimination in violation of Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, MCL 37.2201, et seq. A notice of intent to sue the defendants was filed on March 22, 2024. The named defendants included the University and its Board of Regents; David Grier, then-dean of the SMTD; Gloria Hage, a senior associate general counsel for the University; Martin Philbert, a former provost; and Mark Schlissel, former president of the University and a tenured faculty member himself.

Daniels was hired as a tenure-track professor in the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance (SMTD) at the University of Michigan effective September 1, 2015. He received tenure on May 17, 2018. On March 26, 2020, his employment was terminated for violation of the University’s sexual harassment and faculty-student relations policy. Daniels in his suit denies that he violated this policy or engaged in a pattern of behavior toward any University of Michigan student that was harassing, abusive, or exploitative. In 2023, Daniels entered a guilty plea to a felony sex crime in Texas.

In his filing, Daniels claims “the named defendants decided to terminate his tenured employment, after receiving an e-mail on July 16, 2018 from an individual who accused him of being a “serial sexual predator and rapist” and made specific reference to an “alleged rape of ‘young singer’ in 2010” whom plaintiff claims was never affiliated with any defendant. The University’s Office of Institutional Equity (OIE) began an investigation on August 9, 2018, allegedly without notifying plaintiff, by sending an e-mail to SMTD students.”

The University’s Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs (SACUA) reviewed this matter on January 27, 2020, and SACUA voted to uphold the hearing committee’s recommendation of dismissal on January 29, 2020. Defendant Schlissel, then President of the University, upheld the dismissal recommendation on March 26, 2020. The SACUA retained Hooper Hathaway PC to represent it in these
proceedings while plaintiff was a client of this firm.

In his complaint Daniels, who is gay, alleges that several investigations into alleged sexual harassment or sexual misconduct involving heterosexual men and women employed by the University, including defendants Philbert and Schlissel, did not result in termination of tenured professorships.

In Jan. 2020, Martin Philbert was placed on leave by the Univ. of Michigan following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct. In Mar. 2020, Philbert was fired from his executive position and banned from campus. In June 2020, Philbert submitted his “voluntary and irrevocable retirement” and surrendered his rights to academic tenure in a letter to President Mark Schlissel dated June 7. In Jan. 2022, Univ. of Michigan President Mark Schlissel was fired by the Regents of the University. Schlissel was removed due to an inappropriate relationship with a university employee, but was not stripped of his tenured position.

Daniels’s argument was that the punishment meted out to him was different than the punishments meted out to the two defendant-administrators. Philbert was permitted to surrender his academic tenure and retire. Schlissel is a professor in the school of Literature, Science and the Arts. In 2024, Mark Schlissel was paid $173,544 for a nine-month 0.50 appointment.

The Court of Claims upheld the trial court’s dismissal of Daniel’s suit based on the fact that Daniels had failed to file a timely notice to sue. The Court of Claims’s opinion states, “And, if he [Daniels] had filed a timely notice of intent, he could have waited to file a complaint until three years after his claims accrued.” Put simply, in a Court of Claims appeal, there is no getting around the requirement to file one’s intent to bring suit in a timely manner as it applies to getting around governmental immunity, which the University of Michigan argued it enjoyed in this particular case. The Court’s opinion states, “Compliance with the notice provisions of the COCA (Court of Claims Act) is a condition precedent to overcoming governmental immunity.”

The Court of Claims’s Oct. 30, 2025 opinion ends: “Plaintiff’s failure to comply timely with the notice provisions in the COCA necessitates dismissal of his complaint.” Daniels’s Complaint was dismissed and the Defendants’ Motion for Summary Dismissal was granted.