District Court Denies Summary Judgment in Newcomb Case

A district court denied the motion for summary judgment that would have forced Tulane University to reopen Newcomb College.  The Future of Newcomb College, a group working toward the reopening of Newcomb, has stated the following on their website newcomblives.com:

While we would have preferred a different result, of course, this ruling does not come as a complete surprise. All along, we have known that the ruling of the trial court likely would be preliminary to an appeal in this case as it was in the Howard case.

The following is an excerpt from a press release issued on August 31st by the The Future of Newcomb College, which can also be found on the group’s website:

Despite today’s unfavorable decision, we still strongly believe that both the facts and the law support Susan Henderson Montgomery’s legal claim. Mrs. Newcomb’s bequest to the Tulane Board of Administrators was clearly subject to a charge, or a performance obligation, which the Tulane Board acknowledged, assumed and executed for 119 years. That obligation was to develop and maintain in perpetuity a coordinate women’s college at Tulane.

We will be conferring with Ms. Henderson Montgomery and will determine what our course of action will be.

To allow Tulane University to get away with unnecessarily dissolving Newcomb College against the express wishes of one of their largest donors would be a blow to the concept of ‘donor intent’ and to the future of women’s education everywhere.

For more information regarding this case, please see my prior post.

Special thanks to Sue Bentch (Professor, retired, St. Mary’s University School of Law) for bringing this update to my attention.