Court Rules Against Carnegie Mellon in Investor Dispute

Carnegie Mellon University must defend itself against charges that it fraudulently and negligently misrepresented the state of its research on microwave technology to an investor who lost millions on the work, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled Monday. The court's decision, which overturned a lower court's 2007 judgment, finds that the investor in question, Christian Bouriez, presented sufficient evidence to suggest that Carnegie Mellon's alleged misrepresentations -- about whether researchers had “proven” and “demonstrated" that their microwave technology actually worked, among other things -- were a "substantial factor" in the eventual loss of the $5 million that Bouriez invested in the project, which was later the subject of an arbitration process through which Carnegie Mellon was ordered to pay nearly $10 million to its former corporate partner. Carnegie Mellon officials did not respond to a request for comment on the appeals court's ruling Monday.