DURHAM - Mike Pressler, the former Duke lacrosse coach, no longer wants a judge to rescind his confidential settlement agreement with his former employer.

Instead, lawyers for the fired coach plan to pursue a slander case against Duke University.

Pressler, who lost his job at Duke several weeks after his 2006 team's infamous spring break party, was not in Durham County court Thursday when his attorneys announced their intentions.

Although legal documents filed Wednesday lay out the new allegations, Jay Trehy and Don Strickland, the lawyers representing Pressler, said they would have to start over with a new court case.

Pressler has alleged that John Burness, Duke's senior vice president of public affairs and government relations, made slanderous and defamatory remarks about him to the media. According to the documents filed this week, an April 9, 2007, article in the New York newspaper Newsday quoted Burness as saying the difference between Pressler and current lacrosse coach John Danowski was "night and day."

The second comment came in June 2007, when Burness reportedly told The Associated Press, "It was essential for the team to have a change of leadership in order to move forward."

In court Thursday, lawyers representing Duke vowed to fight the allegations.

John M. Simpson, a lawyer from the Washington offices of Fulbright & Jaworski, a large international law firm representing Duke, argued that any case by Pressler against his former employer should go through arbitration first.

Simpson argued that when Pressler started at Duke in 1990, he signed an agreement to go through an arbitration process with any employment complaints.

Trehy argued Thursday that Pressler could not be held to that agreement in a slander case because the remarks came after his employment at Duke had been terminated.

Legal experts say that cases of slander -- or harmful statements that damage a person's community standing and integrity -- are difficult to prove, because it must be shown that the speaker acted with malicious intent.

Pressler was fired in April 2006, at the height of public condemnation of the lacrosse team after an escort service dancer alleged that three players had gang-raped her at a team party.

The players were vindicated nearly a year later as victims of a rogue prosecutor and declared innocent of all charges by the state attorney general.

Pressler threatened to sue Duke, but in the spring of 2007 he reached a confidential financial settlement with his former employer.

Pressler spent 16 seasons at Duke, building a powerhouse team that won three Atlantic Coast Conference championships, took part in the NCAA tournament 10 times and advanced to the national championship final in 2005.

Since losing his job in April 2006, Pressler has written and promoted a book, "It's Not About the Truth: The Untold Story of the Duke Lacrosse Case and the Lives It Shattered."

He now coaches the men's lacrosse team at Bryant University in Rhode Island.