A jury has found in favor of former Penn State quarterback and assistant coach Mike McQueary in his defamation and misrepresentation case against the school. McQueary was awarded $7.3 million by the jury on Thursday.
The judgment was delivered after less than four hours of deliberation, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, following a two-week trial.
In 2001, McQueary gave an eyewitness report to the Penn State administration of what he believed to be a case of sexual abuse by former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky. McQueary was placed on leave from his coaching duties in November 2011 following the arrest of Sandusky, four days before coach Joe Paterno was fired.
The suit brought by McQueary alleged that the administration's unwillingness to act on his report of Sandusky's abuse was intentional misrepresentation and brought "irreparable harm to his ability to earn a living, especially in his chosen profession of coaching football," according to Charles Thompson of Penn Live.
McQueary argued that his firing was directly related to his cooperation with investigators in the Sandusky case and that the university defamed him in the process.
In his testimony last week, McQueary said Penn State "threw me under the bus" for cooperating with the Sandusky investigation. He also claimed the school made him out to be a scapegoat for the eventual sanctions that were placed on the program -- and later removed -- by the NCAA, and that he's been unable to find a job since because of how he was portrayed by the school.
"What Penn State has done to Mike McQueary is outrageous," McQueary's lawyer Elliot Strokoff said in his closing argument, according to Philly.com. "He should not have been a scapegoat in this matter, and certainly not for five years."
The jury deliberated for four hours on the case before returning with their decision to award McQueary $7.3 million.
