It has been 18 months since former Vermont Governor and Executive-in-Residence Jim Douglas filed a lawsuit against Middlebury College for the removal of “Mead Memorial Chapel” from the campus landmark now known as the Middlebury Chapel. In that time, the parties have attended multiple oral arguments, with the latest taking place last week, and clashed in court filings over a proposed deposition of President Laurie Patton and the relevancy of various discovery requests.
The legal action was taken by the Estate of John A. Mead, headed by Douglas, who is serving as their special administrator. They argued that the college breached its contract with John Abner Mead, class of 1864, that it entered when he donated the $75,000 gift to build the chapel in 1914 under the assumption the building would honor his ancestors indefinitely. The college responded in court filings that there was no legal basis holding them to perpetual naming rights of the chapel, and because of Mead’s role in promoting eugenics policies in Vermont, the place of worship would no longer bear the family name.
Following the college’s earlier motion to dismiss the lawsuit in April 2023, which was denied on Aug. 4 of that year by the Addison County Superior Court, two other motions have been filed and are currently pending. The college re-filed their motion to dismiss the lawsuit in addition to filing another motion for summary judgment, prompting the plaintiff to plan to file for summary judgment as well, according to Douglas.
Relying on statements and evidence, summary judgment is designed to end the case before it goes to trial by concluding that one side has such overwhelming evidence supporting their case that the court could not reasonably rule for the opposing party.
An intermediary step to resolving this lawsuit could be mediation, which both the college and the Mead estate can pursue if summary judgment is denied. While this step has not begun, Douglas hoped this civil approach holds potential for a truncated and more amicable resolution.
While the plaintiff's mission in court today remains largely the same — to restore Mead’s name to the Middlebury Chapel — Douglas expresses that they are willing to make a few adjustments.
“Several descendants said to me, that if they put a plaque outside that says ‘Governor Mead gave money for this chapel, and later on it was discovered that he said something that we don't really like today,’ they’re okay with that. [That’s] more transparency, but, what I object to is erasing our history,” Douglas said.
It is unclear how the college would respond to such an offer if made during mediation. Any potential negotiations during mediation would not be available to the public.
While the estate has looked into other cases of similar nature to compare outcomes, those examples have often resulted in financial settlements, which is not the goal of Mead’s descendants, according to Douglas.
“They're not mercenaries,” he added. “In fact, they're paying the legal bills, they’re making a commitment to this. So that's not what we're after.”
In a hearing last Tuesday, Sept. 17, the plaintiff's lawyer addressed the concerns surrounding whether or not Mead’s original financial contribution fell under contract or gift law for the purposes of naming rights, according to an article published by WCAX the day of the hearing.
“When you give a charitable gift, a donor cannot go into court and seek to have a court enforce a restriction on a charitable gift. When you give a gift to a charitable organization, you give up any interest in it,” said Middlebury College’s lawyer Justin Barnard in court last week, according to WCAX reporting. “There’s no enforceable obligation for the college to maintain the name on the chapel forever,” Barnard said.
“In their wildest dreams, no party to this contract would have ever believed that Middlebury College would have stripped the name and used Governor Mead as a political scapegoat in the year 2021,” said Brooke Dingledine, the attorney representing Douglas, according to WCAX.
While the college denied in a court filing from June 2024 “that there was any binding commitment or ‘essential term, obligation, promise and condition’ to name the Chapel ‘Mead Memorial Chapel’ in perpetuity,” the college acknowledged that Mead personally approved the plans for the chapel, which included drawings of the “Mead Memorial Chapel” plaque above the door.
The Vermont Superior Court filed a decision on July 3, 2024 granting a protective order motion by the college to temporarily delay depositions in the case until the court rules on the motions for summary judgment.
The decision was prompted by the plaintiff’s motion on May 1, 2024 to depose President Laurie Patton because of her connection to the decision to remove Mead’s name in September 2021. The court declined to find that Patton is not subject to deposition at all, taking issue with the college’s arguments that she is irrelevant to the case.
“Middlebury’s contentions that she has little relevant testimony to provide is inconsistent with its expressed fear that preparation and deposition time will have a severe impact on her day-to-day responsibilities. And the implication that Governor Douglas may have impure motives in seeking her deposition is speculative at best,” the court wrote.
Lawyers for Douglas have also sought the names of individual college employees, in addition to members of Prudential Committee and the working group that they claim participated in the decision making process to remove Mead’s name from the chapel. The college strenuously objected to such requests in discovery, stating that it was unnecessary and disproportionate.
“This Request is interposed for the improper purpose of harassing individuals involved in the decision to change the name of the Chapel, and serves no legitimate discovery purpose,” the college wrote in a legal filing.
In its recent court filings, the college has firmly denied the relevancy of multiple assertions by Douglas and the Mead estate that point to other members of the college who were tied to eugenics yet have not been singled out for blame. The college also rejected the assertion that Middlebury removed Mead’s name “due to a single remark that we a century later deem unacceptable,” a reference to the idea of cancel culture which permeates much of the plaintiff’s arguments.
Multiple op-eds published by The Campus have been cited by both sides as evidence of the historical record on eugenics; Middlebury recently referred to an op-ed from December 2022 titled “The eugenics movement and institutional memory at Middlebury” as evidence it “has encouraged inquiry and discussion of this period in the College’s and State of Vermont’s history.”
Despite passionate arguments in court and legal motions, there is no immediate closure in sight since the initial filing. The jury — or in this case, Superior Court Judge — is still out on whether this lawsuit will end in summary judgment, mediation or a lengthy ruling.
