HARRISBURG, Pa. _ In a stinging opinion, a judge Wednesday ordered Pennsylvania State University to pay another $5 million to Mike McQueary, on top of the $7.3 million the former assistant football coach was already awarded after claiming school officials helped destroy his life because he testified against Jerry Sandusky and three administrators accused of covering up Sandusky's crimes.
"The fact that five years (later), Mr. McQueary could not be employed as a cashier in a local drug store shows ... the extent to which he has been ostracized in the Penn State community," Judge Thomas G. Gavin wrote in his 62-page ruling.
The order comes a month after a jury trial that offered unusual window into the searing impact of the case on Penn State and others involved.
That ended with jurors ordering the university to pay $7.3 million to McQueary, a former star quarterback and assistant coach who said he lost his livelihood, career and even his home in the wake of his participation in the investigation and trial against Penn State officials.
In their verdict, jurors found that Penn State officials lied to him when they promised in 2001 to act on his report of seeing Sandusky sexually assault a boy in a campus shower, and then damaged his reputation in public statements when Sandusky was finally arrested a decade later. The judge's order is based on McQueary's claim that his firing and subsequent ostracization amounted to a violation of the state law protecting whistleblowers.
During the trial, Penn State had argued that McQueary lost his job in a routine coaching turnover and wasn't good enough to get another.
Gavin disagreed.
"The objective evidence is that Mr. McQueary would not have been removed from his coaching position but for his involvement in the 'Sandusky Matter' once it became public knowledge," the judge wrote.
Penn State has already appealed the jury's award. In a statement Wednesday, a university spokeswoman said the school is reviewing the judge's latest decision.
