BRISTOL (CT)
ESPN
May 1, 2020
Detroit – A former wrestler who claims he was sexually assaulted by a University of Michigan sports doctor waited too long to file a lawsuit, the school said Friday as it asked a judge to dismiss the case.
The university said it believes Dr. Robert Anderson assaulted athletes, and it wants to compensate victims. But it added that it’s trying to avoid “drawn-out litigation” while a law firm investigates what happened during Anderson’s decades in Ann Arbor. He died in 2008.
“The university is committed to grappling with those findings, whatever they may be, to ensure that nothing like this can ever happen again,” attorneys said in a filing in U.S. District Court.
In his lawsuit, a man identified as John Doe MC-4 said he was molested by Anderson during exams approximately 16 times, from 1987 to 1991. Hundreds of others have said they too were assaulted, some as far back as the 1960s.
“The university has great sympathy for what plaintiff suffered,” attorney Cheryl Bush said of Doe.
But in Doe’s case, Bush noted that decades have passed since the last abuse, making the lawsuit untimely.
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