Chemistry Building Battle Update

A judge has ruled that Florida State University (FSU) must return $11 million in gifts given by eminent organic chemist Robert A. Holton toward a huge new chemistry facility but that it may keep Holton's $18.5 million lab account for the project.

Holton and the university's unusual and tangled royalty agreements are at the center of the building dispute. Holton's development in the early 1990s of a semisynthetic method to make the anticancer drug Taxol (paclitaxel) generated more than $350 million for him and the university. His conflict with FSU has raised questions about the amount of influence a faculty member has to steer the direction of a department (C&EN, Dec. 12, 2005, page 27).

In 1999, Holton and his nonprofit organization Molecular Design & Synthesis (MDS) Research Foundation agreed to donate $6 million in Taxol royalties to FSU's ambitious new $22 million building project: the Program for Molecular Recognition, which would showcase Holton's specialty, synthetic organic chemistry. In 2002, Holton agreed to donate another $5 million, and he also agreed to donate $18.5 million from his lab account that is funded by Taxol royalties.

A few years later, the project's cost had tripled, and a feud erupted between Holton and FSU's new president, Thomas Kent (T. K.) Wetherell. Wetherell claimed Holton made unreasonable demands, micromanaging to the point of directing the number of fume hoods in the building and designating funds for endowed chairs.

Wetherell suddenly axed the project, replacing it with a plan for a building with a more general chemistry focus. He also announced that the university planned to keep not only the $5 million second gift Holton had donated but also the $18.5 million lab account. Holton filed suit, demanding either that the project proceed as originally intended or that the university return the donations and lab account money. Meanwhile, construction on the new building began. The project's cost has now swelled to $67 million.

The Aug. 28 ruling, in Tallahassee court, awarded Holton the gifts he'd donated. However, the lab account, Circuit Judge Janet E. Ferris decided, was ultimately the university's property.

Michael D. Devine, executive director of MDS, expressed disappointment at the ruling. "In retrospect, we probably should have been more diligent about the legal terms of the agreement," he said.

Joseph B. Schlenoff, chair of the committee for the new building, says the department "is looking forward to the completion of this superb facility on which to build our excellence."

Construction on the building continues, and a large part of it is scheduled to be completed sometime next summer, he says.