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A win on court for ULLa. Supreme Court dismisses Cyprien suit The Associated Press • January 22, 2009 NEW ORLEANS – The Louisiana Supreme Court has thrown out a defamation and breach of contract suit brought by a college basketball coach fired just months after he was hired. UL had a valid reason to fire Glynn Cyprien and did not defame him when it accused him of resume fraud, the high court ruled Wednesday. The university had appealed a district judge’s ruling that Cyprien should get a trial of his lawsuit against its athletic director and the governing board for the University of Louisiana System. An appeal court had refused to consider the university’s request, but the justices ruled unanimously that the facts are so clear that no trial is needed – and Cyprien has no case. "It’s what we hoped would happen. It’s what we thought should happen. We’re very, very happy that it has finally ended," said Nelson Schexnayder, who was UL’s athletic director when Cyprien was hired and fired, and is now director of the school’s office of contractural review. Cyprien, now an assistant at Kentucky, spent the 2006-07 season at Arkansas State. He could not be immediately reached for comment. UL hired Cyprien in May 2004. It fired him July 16, 2004, after The Times-Picayune of New Orleans reported that his degrees were from an online school – and he had not graduated from Texas-San Antonio, as a resume claimed. He testified in a sworn statement that he had failed a foreign language requirement, leaving him one class short of graduating from UTSA, and got online bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Lacrosse University, according to the ruling. Lacrosse, based in Bay St. Louis, Miss., is not recognized by major accreditation agencies. It moved from Louisiana to Mississippi in 2002, after the Louisiana Board of Regents voted not to renew its license. Cyprien said he was defamed because he gave the correct information in another form, and hand-delivered a correct resume before a student worker at Oklahoma State, where he worked prior to UL, mistakenly faxed the inaccurate one. "ULL pointed out that Mr. Cyprien consistently submitted resumes containing the same misrepresentations to various universities over the past fourteen years," the Supreme Court noted in an unsigned opinion. Whether a student worker made a mistake or Cyprien hand-delivered a correct resume, neither would outweigh the false resume, they wrote. The high court ruled that since he did submit a false resume – and never gave a legitimate reason for having it in his files – he had no case. Cyprien also claimed that he never violated his contract, and hadn’t even signed one yet, so UL was just using the resume as an excuse. Officials at UL and the University of Louisiana System Board of Supervisors made sworn statements that the school requires a degree from a college accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Since the schools would not have hired Cyprien without such a degree, it had valid ground to turn him away, the justices found.
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