Court upholds award to fired Chicago State whistleblower

CHICAGO (AP) — An Illinois appellate court ruled Wednesday that a former Chicago State University administrator should be paid more than $3 million after he claimed he was fired for acting as a whistleblower.

A three-judge panel of the court ruled the financially troubled university launched "a campaign designed to both economically harm ... and inflict psychological distress upon" former university attorney and administrator James Crowley, The Chicago Tribune reported (http://trib.in/1TpeyXT ).

Crowley alleges the university retaliated against him after he refused to withhold documents requested under the state's open records law about university President Wayne Watson's employment and reported questionable university contracts to the attorney general's office.

"Defendants did whatever they could to protect Watson's reputation, and they did it at Crowley's expense, when he sought only to comply with the public's right to know information about the activities of a state university," Justice Terrence J. Lavin wrote in the unanimous opinion by the three-judge panel.