Yale Daily News
On Thursday, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh ’87 LAW ’90 sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee, defending himself against three allegations of sexual misconduct and claims that he was a heavy drinker in college.
But more than three decades prior, the judge allegedly threw ice at a 21-year old in a fight at a local New Haven bar as a junior at Yale, according to a New York Times report.
The Times obtained a New Haven Police Department report from Sept. 1985, detailing an assault at a bar called Demery’s. While Kavanaugh was not arrested in the incident, he — along with four other men, including Yale basketball player and Delta Kappa Epsilon brother Chris Dudley ’87 — were questioned by the NHPD. According to the police report, Dudley threw a glass that hit the right ear of the victim in the altercation, a 21-year-old man identified as Dom Cozzolino.
Charles Ludington ’87, another Yale basketball player who witnessed the altercation, told the New York Times that the fight occurred after a UB40 concert on Sept. 25, 1985. Ludington and his group of friends were sitting near a man who they thought was UB40’s lead singer, he said, and the man — who was actually Cozzolino — noticed the men looking at him and told them to stop, throwing in an expletive. According to Ludington, Kavanaugh cursed at Cozzolino and “threw his beer at the guy.” Ludington was not mentioned in the NHPD report revealed by the Times.
According to the News archives, both Kavanaugh and Deborah Ramirez ’87 — who has accused Kavanaugh of exposing himself to her at a party when they were both freshmen — frequented Demery’s, a now defunct college bar. In April 1987, Ramirez was quoted in a News story as a witness in a separate fight at the same bar.
The establishment, which shuttered in 1994, is now occupied by Patagonia.
The night of Kavanaugh’s altercation, Cozzolino allegedly swung at Kavanaugh and then Dudley “took his beer and smashed it into the head” of Cozzolino, Ludington told the New York Times. Cozzolino’s right ear began bleeding, and later he was treated at a hospital, according to the police report. When questioned by the police after the fight, Kavanaugh reportedly did not want “to say if he threw the ice or not,” and Dudley denied the accusation.
Dudley did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. The New Haven Police Department declined to comment on the case.
In an interview with the News on Saturday, Dudley said he became friends with Kavanaugh early in their first year when they played basketball together. The two were both members of DKE, the unruly fraternity with a storied history of disrespect toward women.
When asked about the sexual misconduct allegation from Ramirez, Dudley said he has “never seen him touch anyone.”
“He was incredibly respectful,” Dudley explained. “He was just not a physical-type person.”
Mickey Kappele ’87, another DKE brother, said, while he had no recollection of the 1985 bar fight, oftentimes “some people from out of town came in and singled [Dudley] out.” He added that Dudley would fight back and was not “the type of person who would back down.”
Ludington first revealed the bar fight in a statement on Sunday, in which he said Kavanaugh was dishonest about his drinking in college when testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. In the statement, Ludington said Kavanaugh was a “frequent drinker, and a heavy drinker” at Yale and was often “belligerent and aggressive” when intoxicated.
“On one of the last occasions I purposely socialized with Brett, I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark, not by defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man’s face,” Ludington said in the statement. “If he lied about his past actions on national television, and more especially while speaking under oath in front of the United States Senate, I believe those lies should have consequences.”
On Monday evening, Harvard Law School administrators announced that Kavanaugh will not return to teach his course at the Law School next term.
Alice Park | alice.park@yale.edu
Serena Cho | serena.cho@yale.edu