Moritz family disputes development fees pulled from $30M gift to Ohio State's law school
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The family of Michael Moritz, the late lawyer who donated $30.3 million to Ohio State University in 2001 and whose name is attached to its law school, is disputing how the college is using the gift.
Lou Ann Moritz Ransom—the widow of Michel Moritz—and their son, Jeff, claim the donation was meant to endow four faculty chairs and award 30 law school scholarships annually, the Columbus Dispatch reports. They say the money has funded between 12 and 16 full-ride scholarships annually, and is being used for development fees, which was not Michael Moritz’s intent.
According to cleveland.com, the university has pulled up to 1.3 percent of all gifts to fund development efforts since 1994. That was reduced to 1 percent in 2007 the Dispatch notes.
A former head of Baker & Hostetler’s corporate practice and director of Cardinal Health, Moritz attended Ohio State’s law school on a full-ride scholarship before graduating in 1958. Less than a year after making his donation, Moritz, 68, was killed by a hit-and-run driver in Naples, Florida.
After discovering in 2016 that the donation was funding some development, Moritz’s wife and son asked that the university restore that money, Cleveland.com reports, and the university refused. Jeff Moritz’s attorneys unsuccessfully asked a probate court magistrate to name him as a fiduciary, with legal standing to challenge the school’s use of the donation. That ruling is being appealed.
The university did not immediately respond to an ABA Journal interview request. According to the Dispatch, the school maintains that the development fee was enacted by trustees in 1994. Chris Davey, an Ohio State spokesman, told the newspaper that Michael Moritz was a member of the OSU Foundation board and knew about the development fee.
The article reports that the original 2001 gift was 409,478 shares of Cardinal Health and was subsequently sold. The value of the gift has reportedly shrunk by nearly 30 percent to $21.9 million.
“We want to see the university succeed,” Jeff Moritz told cleveland.com. “We want to see the law school succeed. … We love Ohio State. But we can’t sit by and see a $30 million (fund) go to zero.”
