Duke Will Pay UNC Chapel Hill and Its Own Faculty $19 Million to Settle an Antitrust Lawsuit
Certain faculty members at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have started receiving checks as part of $19 million Duke agreed to pay to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging that the two schools conspired not to steal faculty from each other.
A federal judge approved the settlement agreement in late August, ending a long-running dispute that also included a $54 million settlement Duke paid two years ago to medical faculty at the two schools.
The lawsuit alleges that Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill officials had a tacit understanding for decades not to try to hire faculty away from the other. When a Duke radiologist learned of the deal after being turned down for a job at UNC Health, she sued in 2015, leading to the first settlement in the case.
