The University of Colorado and longtime professor Patty Limerick have settled a lawsuit filed by the celebrated historian last year.
Limerick, who the university fired from the Center for the American West in September 2022, sued the university in Boulder County District Court in May, arguing school officials were denying her access to her writings and scholarly works. Limerick said she filed the lawsuit after months of attempting to access her writings. She eventually hired an attorney and filed open-records requests to help identify her work in CU’s libraries and databases.
The school offered some electronic records but declined to give Limerick full access to all the Center of the American West records. The school last year sent Limerick a letter saying CU “is the owner of any educational materials, scholarly and artistic works” created by Limerick since she joined the faculty at the Boulder campus in 1984.
The lawsuit marked an intellectual property fight, with Limerick hoping she could prod CU Boulder into valuing the work of its arts and humanities professors as much as it does the scholarly work of its science and engineering professors.
The university argued it was not preventing Limerick from accessing her works.
At a mediation between Limerick and the university this week, the sides reached an agreement “that Professor Limerick does in fact own her life’s work,” according to the statement from her attorneys.
“It is Limerick’s hope that this outcome will protect professors in the future from a similar ordeal,” reads a statement from her attorney announcing that she has “prevailed in a settlement of the case.”
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The university issued a statement that Limerick “is and will continue to be a valued tenured faculty member.”
“The university supports Professor Limerick’s current and future academic works, including the Applied History Initiative, a program focused on educating and elevating the work of society’s young historians,” reads a joint statement from the university and Limerick.
In September 2022, the new dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Glen Krutz, announced he was firing Limerick from the Center of the American West, which she founded in 1986 as a forum examining critical Western challenges. The school later released an investigation sparked by complaints by center staff that found Limerick had violated ethical rules addressing “prudence and integrity in the management of university resources.” The investigation concluded that Limerick’s relationship with staff was “fractured.”
Krutz’s firing of Limerick prompted all five members of the center’s executive committee of the center’s board to resign. In the spring of 2023, more than 300 academics, researchers and historians criticized CU and Krutz for the sudden firing of the respected professor, saying “The Center of the American West is currently fading. … There will be lasting loss and damage to CU Boulder and the field of Western history, applied history and countless others.”
Krutz resigned as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in June, but still works as a professor of political science in the college.
“For 40 years, Limerick was a hyperactive advocate of and ambassador for the University of Colorado,” reads the statement emailed from Limerick’s attorneys at the Garnett Powell Maximon Barlow and Farbes firm. “Over the last two years, the university’s actions and decisions reduced her authority when it came to exercising that role. She is relieved and happy to return to the public sphere, voicing her affection for and gratitude to the faculty and students of the University of Colorado on every possible occasion.”