A long-simmering harassment lawsuit against the University of Southern California and one of its longtime professors ended with a last-minute deal on April 7, 2026, the very day a jury trial was set to kick off in Los Angeles. The case, brought by a doctoral candidate who accused her department chair of grooming and retaliatory academic treatment, had been narrowed to a single claim as it headed toward trial.
Settlement Filed As Jury Was About To Be Seated
On April 7, attorneys notified Los Angeles Superior Court that the parties had reached an unconditional accord, telling Judge Barbara Meiers the jury trial would not go forward. The filing took the case off the trial calendar just as it was scheduled to begin. Meiers had previously stripped away several causes of action, but she allowed one claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress against Professor David C. Kang to proceed to a jury, according to MyNewsLA.
Lawsuit Landed Amid A Cluster Of Campus Complaints
The lawsuit, first filed in August 2024, was one of multiple complaints lodged against Kang in recent years. Together, they formed a cluster of campus-related allegations that drew attention from student-focused outlets and ethnic media. Coverage that followed the court dockets noted separate filings and related proceedings at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse, as tracked by The Korea Daily.
Inside The Doctoral Candidate’s Allegations
In court papers, the doctoral candidate describes Kang, identified as her department chair and dissertation adviser, as having begun grooming her by inviting her to lunch in November 2021. The complaint says that once he was supervising her work, he used that authority to retaliate with what she calls unfair academic treatment.
Among other claims, the lawsuit alleges Kang gave her a failing grade on a substantive qualifying exam after previously telling her the work was satisfactory. It also accuses him of making sexually stereotypical remarks, including saying his children “needed a mother,” and of asking the plaintiff to take his daughter shopping in South Korea. Those allegations, as well as the notice of settlement, are detailed in court filings and reported by MyNewsLA.
What The Deal Means In Court
An unconditional accord is the kind of filing that typically ends the immediate dispute and takes the case off the trial calendar, although judges generally wait for formal dismissal documents before closing a file. Here, most of the plaintiff’s discrimination and harassment claims had already been pared away, leaving only the intentional infliction of emotional distress claim as a live theory of liability and potential damages.
This settlement resolves the doctoral candidate’s claims in this particular lawsuit. Other suits involving Kang, however, are still moving through Los Angeles court dockets, so this agreement closes just one front in a broader series of allegations that continue to draw media attention. Several of those related filings and hearing dates have been followed by The Korea Daily.
