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A Massachusetts jury awarded former MIT biologist Dr. David Sabatini a $6 million defamation victory over sexual misconduct claims, setting the stage for cross-appeals as both legal teams prepare to take the case to a higher court.
Dr. Kristin Knouse, the former colleague whose sexual misconduct allegations dismantled Sabatini’s American academic career, is challenging the October verdict. Her decision triggered a battle over legal consequences surrounding workplace misconduct claims and the authority of campus tribunals.
Knouse’s attorney, Ellen Zucker, believes that the $6 million verdict could potentially stop female scientists from reporting misconduct, claiming the jury’s decision reflects a society that refuses to believe women who challenge powerful men.
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“When someone can get sued for having spoken out, that kills the willingness of anyone to participate in an investigation,” Zucker told Fox News Digital. “Daring to speak out will get you sued, [and] the likelihood that anyone would come forward goes down a lot.”
Sabatini’s legal team rejected the narrative. His attorney, Lisa G. Arrowood, told Fox News Digital that the verdict poses zero threat to genuine victims.
“The jury verdict in this case should have no impact on women who truly have been harassed or abused and decide to report the misconduct,” Arrowood said.
“What the jury found here, based on the contemporaneous documents written by Dr. Knouse herself, was that no harassment ever occurred and that her claims of harassment and rape were false and defamatory. This jury verdict, therefore, has no bearing on people who report truthfully.”
Arrowood also expressed confidence that the $6 million penalty would withstand appeal.
“This is her right,” Arrowood said. “However, the judge was very careful in this case and frequently ruled in her favor on many close calls. We think her appeal will be unsuccessful.”
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Zucker argued that the verdicts will not stand, warning that penalizing accusers threatens future institutional investigations.
“We do not believe the verdicts will stand,” Zucker said. “Our client came to court and told the truth about her experiences with Sabatini, as did multiple other women; investigators uncovered several violations of institutional policy.”
The upcoming appellate fight will scrutinize the events that led to the lawsuit.
Consensual or coerced
The pair first met in 2012, when Knouse was a doctoral student in the Harvard-MIT M.D./Ph.D. program and Sabatini served on her thesis committee. By 2018—after Knouse had been named a Whitehead Fellow—they began a relationship, according to court documents.
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Sabatini maintained the relationship was consensual. Knouse alleged it was coerced and that Sabatini created an inappropriate workplace dynamic. A 2021 Whitehead investigation found Sabatini violated its workplace relationship policy.
Text messages made public during the case showed Knouse wrote that she would “fixate on how I’m being held as a backup and competed against other women,” Boston 25 News reported.
In one message about visiting Sabatini’s hotel room one night on a work retreat, she wrote: “In hindsight, it was quite aggressive, #hetoo,” according to the outlet.
Knouse launched a campaign against Sabatini that she called “Covert Operation Dethrone,” Boston 25 reported, and joked in one message about buying a “Lambo” if she won a settlement.
“Dr. Sabatini and his legal team do not criticize the MeToo movement or the right of women to complain of harassment,” Arrowood added. “This case is unique in that the jury found that Dr. Knouse’s claims were fabricated and designed to cause harm to Dr. Sabatini.”
After Knouse accused him of sexual misconduct, MIT administrators stripped Sabatini of his tenured position. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute dismissed him. The Whitehead Institute ousted him.
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Arrowood said that Sabatini’s team is launching its own counter-offensive on appeal, seeking to overturn the court’s earlier decision that dismissed the Whitehead Institute from the lawsuit.
MIT and HHMI were not defendants in the defamation lawsuit.
MIT declined to comment but referred Fox News Digital to a letter sent out to staff in 2022, when Sabatini resigned and the school said he was found to have “behaved in ways incompatible with the responsibilities of faculty membership.”
HHMI did not respond to a request for comment.
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Title IX Investigations
The universities based their firings on internal Title IX investigations, which concluded that Sabatini violated policies by entering into an undisclosed romantic relationship with a junior researcher.
The campus tribunals require a low burden of proof, which rarely allows the accused to cross-examine the accuser, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
Arrowood argued that the institutions rushed to judgment before the facts could be tested in a civil court.
“This verdict should send universities the message that all the facts and documents from both sides need to be obtained and analyzed before deciding to fire someone,” she said.
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“Here, the investigators and the Whitehead Institute allowed one party and her lawyers to control what evidence they received and even what they could show to Dr. Sabatini. Had the full picture been shown to the institution and to the investigators, we believe the outcome would have been different.”
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When the legal battle reached a Suffolk County courtroom, the jury denied Knouse’s counterclaims of harassment and instead ordered her to pay Sabatini millions for defamation.
While Sabatini won the courtroom battle, the years-long ordeal destroyed his U.S. research operation. Activist billionaire Bill Ackman stepped in and funded a new laboratory for Sabatini in Prague, where Sabatini continues his life-saving cancer research.
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“I lost everything. There was nothing left of my normal life,” Sabatini previously told Boston 25 News. “I’ve been dreaming about this moment for all this time, but often thinking I might not make it, financially, emotionally or physically.”
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The case now moves to the Massachusetts appellate courts. The formal briefing schedule is pending.
