Two Indiana residents filed a complaint Monday seeking over $2 billion in compensatory damages against an IU professor, five former Kelley School of Business master’s students and real estate developer Discovery Land.
The students were in a class at Kelley in the fall of 2021 related to analyzing and providing feedback on a Puerto Rico-based golf resort developed by World Trade Center San Juan. The complaint alleges the former students violated a non-disclosure agreement about the business plan for the resort by sharing it with a competitor, Discovery Land.
The complaint says two of the students had a personal connection to Discovery Land, including access to its CEO. Another student had ties to the professional golf community.
The plaintiffs allege the class’s professor had an obligation to convey the confidentiality of the project to the class and to identify potential conflicts of interest.
Further, the professor’s actions were outside the scope of his employment, the complaint alleges, and he did not have the authority to bind the university.
After the students communicated with Discovery Land, the company convinced the Puerto Rican Local Redevelopment Authority to breach its agreement with World Trade Center San Juan to use land for the resort, the complaint alleges.
Discovery Land used the partnerships World Trade Center Puerto Rico developed, the complaint says, to steal its business model without contacting them to purchase the idea or partner with them.
In the class, the profits for the plaintiffs’ business plan were determined to exceed $1 or $2 billion, according to a press release.
“It is rare to file a lawsuit where the defendants have already determined the value of the damages to the plaintiffs,” the plaintiffs’ attorney Paul Jefferson said in the release. “But that is what the Kelley School of Business did here. We look forward to a fair resolution of this case.”
The plaintiffs are World Trade Center San Juan owners Tim and Doris Anne Sadler, according to the release. Tim Sadler graduated from IU in 1992, and the two are Presidents Circle donors at IU, according to family spokesperson Michael Murphy.
A representative for Discovery Land did not immediately provide a comment.
