Opinion ID: 2154496
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Dr Vossoughi's Lost Course Materials

Text: Dr. Vossoughi testified that when UDC emptied his laboratory, it destroyed class notes and other materials he had developed to teach a total of twenty-one different courses. Most of the courses were in engineering subjects, though two were architecture courses. Dr. Vossoughi created all but one of these courses while he was at Catholic University; the exception was created at UDC. He testified that creating new course materials involves not just getting [a] few text book[s], reading, learning, and teaching. For specialized courses, you have to do a lot of research. . . . And then for each course you come up with solution[s] of the examples, exams. And then for laboratory courses, a lot more time, of course. Dr. Vossoughi estimated that the typical course took one quarter of a year, or half of one semester, to create, and that it represented an investment of time worth $25,000  a figure he justified by explaining that the average tenured engineering professor is paid a salary of $100,000 for a full year, or two semesters. Thus, Dr. Vossoughi placed a total value of $525,000 on the twenty-one sets of course materials destroyed by UDC. On cross-examination, Dr. Vossoughi acknowledged that he had not based this valuation on his own compensation, which had been considerably less than $100,000; when he was an adjunct professor at UDC, his salary was about $62,000 per year. Dr. Vossoughi also stated that he had never tried to sell his course materials, because [n]obody would buy somebody else's notes. It's useless [sic] only for that particular class. Both Dr. Conway and Dr. Saha supported the reasonableness of Dr. Vossoughi's valuation. In the opinion of Dr. Conway, who was personally acquainted with many of Dr. Vossoughi's course materials, [4] $25,000 per course was a good, . . . conservative estimate of their value. Dr. Conway explained that Dr. Vossoughi had created advanced courses based on his own expertise and experimental background, and his lecture notes for a given course could be up to 450 pages long. Dr. Conway and Dr. Saha agreed that it would take half a semester to develop such materials for a new course. They also agreed that it was reasonable to assume an average salary of $100,000 a year for a professor of Dr. Vossoughi's standing in valuing such a time investment. Dr. Conway noted that a junior professor would earn that amount at most universities across the country. He added that Dr. Vossoughi had been considered for a position at my university but unfortunately he wasn't able to have any lab equipment to bring with him and he wasn't offered the position. It would have been $130,000 a year.