Both Nichols and UW fought to keep the records pertaining to her firing as the President of U.S. confidential. . .

but the Court ordered them opened. 

They served to be embarrassing, in part as Nichols wasn't made aware of them while they were going on and couldn't contest them.  Nothing horrific, but simply allegations of abrasive behavior, which might be untrue.  Nonetheless, the Press fought for their release, they spread it around.

Since then they've been complaining that the news that they spread around, which she didn't want released, is an awful thing as she couldn't contest it. She couldn't, but now she has to defend her reputation in the public sphere, to the extent anyone cares about it now, which is pretty hard to do.

And today the press is running a story that UW spent $42,000, which really isn't all that much to hire a competent attorney to takes this on, as they did, fighting the release. Presumably the press will also report on how much it spent to drag the story out in the public.  All in all, I'm surprised by how low the legal fees were, but that probably isn't the point of the stories, which don't grasp how expensive and difficult legal work really is.

Something is simply amiss here.