University of Wyoming (UW) graduate Artemis Langford sued two Wyoming lawyers last year. She alleged they had engaged in a campaign to bully her on national TV while raising money through online crowd-funding.
Langford has settled with one of the lawyers for an undisclosed amount. But Langford and attorney John Knepper could still be headed to a jury trial. The jury would decide whether Knepper abused the legal process or intentionally inflicted emotional distress.
Langford was the first openly transgender member of UW’s Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority in 2022. Knepper and the other lawyer, Cassie Craven, represented Kappa members who sued the sorority to remove Langford.
That lawsuit has been defeated, but a final appeal is still alive in the 10th Circuit.
Langford’s counter lawsuit alleges Knepper and Craven engaged in “extreme and outrageous conduct” while advancing their clients’ case and “publicly humiliate[d]” her.
“Defendants needlessly sued Ms. Langford and injected into their filings exaggerated, false, and humiliating sorority gossip as well as private details about her life,” Langford’s suit alleges. “Defendants used these stories not to further their clients’ legal claims, but to raise money for their own attorney fees and to get their fifteen minutes of fame. As the District Court would later find, these details were legally irrelevant and unbefitting in federal court.”
Craven and the Kappa members, though not Knepper, made national TV appearances, including the Megyn Kelly Show, which is highlighted in Langford’s lawsuit.
“I think this is a guy who’s just getting off on living with these beautiful women,” Kelly said during a May 2023 interview. “That’s how it sounds to me.”
“It could be,” Craven replied. “I’ve had a lot of friends tell me, ‘If I knew it was that easy to get into a sorority house, I would have put on a skirt a long time ago.’”
Langford’s suit alleges that “including irrelevant and unsubstantiated allegations against Ms. Langford in court filings” and “implying that Ms. Langford is a sexual deviant” represent an abuse of the legal process.
In her own answer to the allegations, Craven pointed to Langford’s own willingness to step into the spotlight, first in the campus’ student newspaper and then for a Washington Post feature once the case had garnered national attention.
Craven maintains in her own filing that she was rightfully advancing her clients’ interests.
“There was no abuse of process, but instead a reinforcement of their rights as women to be protected in a single sex environment pursuant to the contract they signed,” Craven alleges.
Late last month, Langford and Craven settled out of court on the four claims Langford had brought against the lawyer.
Langford brought the same four claims against Knepper, but a judge has dismissed two of them.
The remaining two claims, abuse of process and intentional infliction of emotional distress, have been allowed to proceed. The validity of those claims could be decided by Knepper’s peers during a jury trial at an as-of-yet undetermined future date.
