DURHAM - Mike Pressler, the former Duke lacrosse coach, filed a lawsuit suit Wednesday in Durham County court against his former employer and John Burness, the university's chief spokesman.

Attorneys for the fired coach announced their plans last week to pursue the slander case. The suit also makes libel claims.

"As we have said before, Mr. Pressler reached a fair and final financial settlement with Duke University in 2007. There is no merit to this lawsuit, and it is yet another attempt to reopen a settled matter," Pamela Bernard, vice president and general counsel for Duke, said in a statement released late Wednesday.

Pressler lost his job at Duke several weeks after his 2006 team's infamous spring break party, which gave rise to gang-rape charges against three players. The players were exonerated and declared innocent a year later.

Last week in Durham County court, Jay Trehy and Don Strickland, the lawyers representing Pressler, withdrew their request for a judge to rescind a settlement agreement between Pressler and Duke so they could pursue the slander and libel case.

Pressler has alleged that Burness, Duke's senior vice president of public affairs and government relations, made slanderous, libelous and defamatory remarks about him to the news media.

In court last week, lawyers representing Duke vowed to fight the suit.

John M. Simpson, a lawyer 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 last week that Pressler could not be held to that agreement in a slander case because the remarks came after his employment at Duke had ended.

Pressler reached a confidential financial settlement with Duke last spring after the players were cleared of all charges.

Since losing his job in April 2006, Pressler has written and promoted a book about the lacrosse case. He now coaches at Bryant University in Rhode Island.

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