The Investigators
Update: Brown University finally fills an endowment to keep millions of dollars
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) -- Brown University waited nine years to fill a professorship endowed by a family trust that has sued the university over the matter.
The appointment of Alfred Buxton, 57, as the Ruth and Paul Levinger Professor of Cardiology came less than a month after the trust filed a lawsuit seeking to take the endowment, now worth more than $2.2 million, back. The trust wanted to give the money to another medical school.
Brown claims the timing of the appointment was not influenced by the lawsuit.
"Recruitment for that chair has been going on for quite awhile," Brown spokesman Mark Nickel said. "The lawsuit did not occasion the appointment."
A lawyer with the trust was unsure whether the suit will be dropped.
Brown has asked that the lawsuit be dismissed, claiming the university had "acted in good faith" and that the suit doesn't set forth "any legally binding duty violated."
The trust was set up in the name of Paul Levinger, the late former president of the Speidel Inc. watchband company in East Providence.
Buxton has been at Brown Medical School since 1999.
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