The lawsuit, which seeks $10 million in compensatory damages and $15 million in punitive damages, was filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta and names Harrick, university president Michael Adams and athletics director Vince Dooley.
``We don't think there's any merit to the lawsuit against Coach Harrick and we think he will end up being dismissed form the case,'' Adam Appel, Harrick's attorney told the Athens Banner-Herald for a Thursday story.
The student claimed that in January 2002 basketball teammates Tony Cole and Steven Thomas, and football player Brandon Williams, raped her in Cole's dormitory room on the UGA campus.
The lawsuit claims the three university administrators knew that Cole who later was kicked off the team had a history of sexual assaults before being admitted to the university in August 2001.
Adams and Dooley have already denied those allegations.
In August 2002, a Clarke County jury found Williams innocent of rape and soon after criminal charges against Cole and Thomas were dropped.
Harrick's motion claims that the lawsuit does not present factual evidence that Harrick deprived the alleged victim of her constitutional rights as she claims. He also claims it was Adams, not Harrick, who ultimately decided to admit Cole to UGA despite having a history of sexual misconduct before arriving in Athens.
The former student, then a freshman, told police that on Jan. 14, 2002 she and Cole, her former boyfriend, had consensual sex in his dorm room. Afterward, a man later identified as Williams emerged from Cole's closet and sexually assaulted her, she told police. The woman told police that Thomas then entered the room and sexually assaulted her.
UGA last March chose not to renew the contract of Jim Harrick Jr., an assistant coach, amid Georgia and NCAA investigations into the men's basketball program. Harrick Sr. resigned the same month.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2004/1/166125