Attorney Roger Brown said Monday he plans to re-try Annette Digby's complaint Lincoln University fired her in 2011 because she's white.
"Absolutely," he told the News Tribune. "I'm going to amend the petition, do some more discovery, including deposing the curators.
"You always learn things in trial" that can help make a re-trial better.
A Cole County jury was unable to reach a verdict at the end of last week's five-day trial in the case, telling Circuit Judge Jon Beetem about 1:30 a.m. Saturday they were deadlocked.
Digby, who was hired in 2007 as Lincoln's vice president for Academic Affairs and provost, said she was told May 31, 2011, she had to resign or be fired. She resigned effective June 30.
Brown first sued LU on Digby's behalf in 2012, after she received a right-to-sue letter from the Missouri Human Rights Commission.
The lawsuit alleged - and Brown argued in court last week - Digby had received nothing but good reviews, but was fired after some unknown and unnamed African American alumni and others told then-President Carolyn Mahoney they had "strong concerns and dissatisfactions that a white person was serving in (Digby's) position, and that because she was white, she would not be able to perform in that position to their satisfaction."
LU officials said that didn't happen.
"According to the one juror I talked to, there were at least three jurors who just found it difficult to find that Carolyn Mahoney would do that to anybody," Brown said Monday afternoon. "My understanding is that the six who were with us were very, very strong with us - and, in fact, began the discussion as to damages."
While Brown called that "a good sign," he noted the jury never could get nine of its 12 members to agree. At least nine votes are needed for a verdict in a civil suit.
LU lawyer Kent Brown - no relation to Roger - said the jury might have reached a different conclusion if he had been allowed to present evidence "Dr. Digby and the other individual who were let go on the same day were the only two white administrators, out of seven administrators total that (Mahoney) let go or re-assigned during her administration."
But Beetem's rulings on what could be presented during the trial limited the evidence only to the dismissals of Digby and former Enrollment Management Director Mike Kosher, who both were replaced by African Americans.
"There were five other, African American high-level administrators who were released, and four of those five were replaced by whites," Kent Brown said. He's looking to see if he can appeal Beetem's evidentiary rulings before the case goes to a re-trial.
"We respect the law and legal procedures," he said, but "President Mahoney really didn't feel like she was able to tell her side of the story."
Both lawyers said the jurors worked hard and paid attention to the evidence as it was presented.
Kent Brown said Roger Brown did a good job of reminding the jury regularly Digby's existing evaluations were good ones, but the jury may not have understood that, with "highly-paid, upper-level administrators, that type of face-to-face coaching and documentation is really not a part of how things are, usually, done."
Roger Brown said: "The overwhelming testimony of other people - from deans to instructors to administrators - was that (Digby) represented Lincoln extremely well and represented Dr. Mahoney extremely well. This was an extraordinarily talented lady, who was extremely efficient and kind to everybody, with a great personality and got great results.
"(She) was given task after task by Dr. Mahoney - literally, from the beginning, given more and more responsibility, more and more duties - and she took them and she ran with them and they can't point to one thing that was unsuccessfully done."
Not so, countered Kent Brown.
"The bottom line is the president met once a week with Dr. Digby, and Dr. Digby was pretty clear on what the problems were," he explained. "When you hire someone you are hiring their extraordinary abilities to lead.
"Dr. Digby, unfortunately, wanted to be led."
With the differences between their position staked out so strongly, both attorneys said a negotiated settlement is possible but not likely.
A re-trial in the case can't happen until next year because the court and the attorneys already have other cases scheduled at least through the end of 2016.