Photo: EQRoy/Shutterstock.com

A plaintiffs attorney wants the Michigan State Bar to do some digging into the Michigan State University in-house lawyer who investigated a Title IX sexual abuse complaint against sports doctor Larry Nassar in 2014.

Lansing attorney David Mittleman, of the Church Wyble law firm, spoke up on the issue at an open court hearing last week.

“In my 33 years I have never had the ethical responsibility of reporting a lawyer for committing an act that I believe is contrary to the ethical standards of the State Bar of Michigan,” he said, according to a recently released hearing transcript.

Mittleman then began to explain. He started to describe an email sent by the MSU lawyer, Kristine Moore, to Dean William Strampel, Nassar's supervisor at the MSU College of Osteopathic Medicine. In the email, Moore wrote she sent one version of her investigative report to Nassar, and another version “without the substantive text in the conclusion” to the woman who had filed the abuse claim against Nassar.

But before Mittleman could finish his sentence, he was interrupted by Patrick Fitzgerald, a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois and now a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in Chicago. Fitzgerald is MSU's defense counsel.

The court cut in and asked the relevance of Mittleman's statements about ethics. When he tried again to raise the ethical issue of the two different reports, the court told him to “take it up with the State Bar of Michigan.”

In an interview with ALM this week, Mittleman said he plans to do just that.

Mittleman's firm represents at least 80 of the more than 200 plaintiffs making claims against MSU, USA Gymnastics and a training facility called Twistars. Nasser was involved with all three. MSU defense lawyers and trustees have accused some plaintiffs attorneys of grandstanding for the press.

But Mittleman reiterated, “I intend to report her [Moore] to the bar. I have never in 33 years of practice reported any one. But at the conclusion of this litigation, I do intend to report her.”

Mittleman said he is waiting in hopes that he will be able to question Moore under oath about the two versions of the report.

“Our Title IX expert has never heard of there being two versions of a report,” he said. “It violates the premise of Title IX, which is treating everyone equally. She [Moore] was supposed to be an independent person doing the investigation.”

Moore has been assistant general counsel at the university since late 2014, but before taking that post she was an attorney and assistant director in MSU's Office for Inclusion, which investigated Title IX complaints.

The report Moore gave to Nassar and the university contained language calling Nassar “a liability to the school” because what he called treatments were perceived as sexual abuse. Moore deleted the liability language in the copy she gave to the complainant.

Both versions cleared Nassar of wrongdoing, saying he was medically treating the women, not abusing them. The conclusion was mostly based on Moore's interviews with three of Nassar's colleagues at MSU, who vouched for him.

“She couldn't find another expert who didn't know Nassar to ask about the treatments?” Mittleman asked. “This state is full of good medical schools who would have told her the truth about the so-called 'treatments.'”

Moore's investigation failed “on multiple layers,” Mittleman said, “and with the egregious results of 40 to 50 more women being molested.”

Besides Mittleman's criticism of Moore, an MSU trustee also has called for the resignation of the school's general counsel, Robert Noto. So far Noto remains in the job. Interim President John Engler has said he will propose some “changes” to the board of trustees at their next meeting Wednesday.

In other developments:

• On Monday, Nassar received his final sentence of 40 to 125 years from Eaton County Circuit Court in Michigan. That sentence will run concurrently with a 40- to 175-year sentence handed down earlier in another county court. Both state sentences begin after a 60-year federal sentence for child pornography.
• Michigan Attorney General William Schuette continues with a special prosecutor's criminal investigation into how MSU handled the Nassar complaints. On Feb. 2 his office executed search warrants at the university.
• In response to the scandal, Michigan legislators have introduced a bill that would allow the governor to disband the board of trustees at MSU and two other public universities in January, and appoint all new slates.
• Several Nassar defense lawyers have said they and their families have received death threats, according to the Detroit Free Press.