CLEMSON — Three years after a jury awarded a former Clemson University student a whopping $5.3 million award in a high-profile defamation lawsuit, the S.C. Court of Appeals has reversed the opinion of a Pickens County judge and called for a new ruling.
The ruling in this appeal is one of many in a series of lawsuits that have stemmed from a sexual encounter between Erin Wingo and Andrew Pampu in October 2015 when they were both freshmen at Clemson University.
Pampu said he had consensual sex with Wingo. She said she was intoxicated and the act was without her consent.
In March 2022, a Pickens County jury awarded $5.3 million to Pampu after finding that Wingo, her father, and her friend Colin Gahagan had conspired to defame him following the 2015 incident.
The case had implications for universities across the nation as they assessed their on-campus processes for handling sexual assault cases among students.
The history of Andrew Pampu and Erin Wingo
The legal saga stretched over seven years until its supposed resolution in 2022. The facts were laid out in the June 11 appeals court opinion.
In October 2015, Wingo and Pampu had been drinking before engaging in sex at an off-campus Phi Delta Theta fraternity party.
After Wingo told some friends, including her love interest, Colin Gahagan, that she couldn’t remember full details of the night, she and Gahagan brought the incident before the Clemson University Office of Community and Ethical Standards as a sexual assault.
Pampu claimed that Wingo had pursued him that night after a spat with Gahagan.
The OCES process, the school’s student discipline program, determined in February 2016 that Pampu should have known Wingo was unable to give consent the night of their encounter because of her level of intoxication.
He was suspended from the university for six months and removed from on-campus housing. After an appeal, the university president added one year to his suspension.
In June 2016, Pampu filed federal action against Clemson University and several of its employees, claiming violation of Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination.
The case was settled with the university's decision upheld, and was later dismissed.
In June 2017, Pampu filed a lawsuit against Wingo, Gahagan and Wingo’s father, who had written a letter to the fraternity’s national office. The case went to trial in March 2022 with a jury that awarded Pampu $3 million in damages for the civil conspiracy claim and $2.3 million for defamation.
The Wingos and Gahagan then filed separate motions for a new ruling from a judge or a new trial on both the claims. The circuit court said yes on the civil conspiracy claim and denied their motion to rehear the defamation charge.
SC Appeals Court ruling in Pampu v. Wingo
The appeals court heard the case on March 25, and in the June 11 ruling the court agreed the civil conspiracy should be reheard and disagreed that the defamation claim was settled.
Wingo and Gahagan’s attorneys argued that previous rulings cannot be continuously relitigated — a legal term known “collateral estoppel" — which they said came into play with the Clemson University OCES process.
Pampu had settled his case against Clemson University and agreed to the findings — that he should have known Wingo was too intoxicated to provide consent for their encounter.
Thus he is “bound by Clemson’s findings,” the appeals court ruling said, and that the alleged defamatory statements from Wingo and Gahagan were true — defeating the defamation claim by definition of the term.
“This decision affirms that when the truth has been fully and fairly established in a court of law, it cannot be ignored or endlessly challenged," Susan Porter, an attorney for the Wingos, told The Post and Courier.