Last month, five current employees and one former employee of the UW Police Department filed suit against the University of Washington, seeking monetary compensation based on racial, sexual orientation, age and religious discrimination. While lawsuits against the University are not out of the ordinary, this case promises to bring a unique level of difficulty to the litigation process that could take up to a year to settle.

“This case is unique because so many people are involved,” said Andrew Cooley, an attorney with the law firm Keating, Bucklin and McCormack, which has entered the case on the University’s behalf.

Cooley said most cases in which individuals file suit as a group involve allegations that stem from a particular class. This particular suit contains allegations of discrimination against not just one class, but at least five. These classes include age, race, sexual orientation, gender and religion.

“It’s very unusual to have them all grouped together when the allegations aren’t grouped in the same class,” Cooley said.

The University began speaking with Cooley as early as this summer as they anticipated the lawsuit, but Cooley wasn’t officially appointed until last month.

“The University is actually one of the few state agencies that can hire outside agencies because they are self-insured,” Cooley said.

Typically the University would rely on defense from the attorney general.

“The attorney general is the attorney for the UW, and they have an excellent staff of attorneys but certain types of work is an overload for them,” said UW spokesman Norm Arkans. “We have engaged [the KBM lawyers] to work on a number of different human resources cases, and we do this in a whole variety of fields.”

Because this case is being tried in federal court, early disclosure of evidence is mandatory for the respective parties. In this particular case, the disclosure isn’t scheduled to happen until Dec. 22. At this point, the parties involved will discuss how quickly they can prepare for trial.

“One option is for the court to order separate trials for the separate parties involved, but nothing has been decided about that yet,” Cooley said. “I think it’s likely that some of the allegations will be thrown out, but it’s too early to tell.”

While Cooley feels certain allegations won’t carry weight in court, there are other allegations concerning discrimination in the lawsuit that contain much more gravity than others.

“It’s just all over the map,” Cooley said.

Reach reporter Casey Smith at news@dailyuw.com.