What can I do if one of my referees falsifies information in a Letter of Recommendation? I am in a difficult situation in regards to letters of recommendation and I would like to ask for a bit of advice from all of you. 

This past June, I applied to several different medical schools across the country and each one required me to submit at least 3 letters of recommendations (1 from a non-science professor and 2 from science professors). All of the faculty members that I asked were happy to write me letters of recommendation. However, one of the faculty members delayed writing the letter of recommendation for a very long time (almost 5 months) despite several reminders. One of the medical schools had a strict deadline by which they wanted their application to be completed and because of the delay from this one letter writer, I was automatically rejected from the school. At this point, I decided to return to my university (I already graduated) and speak with my letter writer in person. 

From the discussion with my letter writer, I found out some very disturbing things about his intentions. He was very displeased with my in-person visit to his office (even though I did email him several times beforehand without him bothering to respond). It was at this point that he began accusing me of things that were 100% false and was threatening to include this false information in his letter of recommendation. He eventually submitted his letter of recommendation, and, at this point, I could not stop him from doing so. 

Now I know that many of you will say that I should have been able to see this coming and avoid asking this faculty member for a letter of recommendation. But, with all honesty, I was completely under the impression that this professor will write me a strong letter of evaluation. I viewed this person as someone that was a true mentor to me throughout college, and this situation is very disheartening. In my honest evaluation of the situation, I believe that writing a negative letter of recommendation that includes false information about a student out of spite is completely unethical. I also believe that I should have the opportunity to defend myself.

There is no way that I can see what he wrote in his letter of recommendation. If anybody here has any sort advice in regards to this situation, please I would greatly appreciate it. I would hate to see a letter of recommendation that contains false information ruin my chances of pursuing my academic goals. Is it possible to take legal action in this matter?
This is a most unusual situation. It's extremely rare for there to be such a large discrepancy between what a student thinks a professor thinks about them and what the professor actually thinks about them. Considering also that in this case the professor's opinion is wrong (as I will assume for the purposes of the answer, though I know nothing of the details of course), this scenario falls right through the cracks of the whole system of letters of recommendation, which was simply not designed with such situations in mind.

With that said, I think that somewhat ironically, the very strangeness of the situation offers a glimmer of hope, since it means that you can consider unusual steps that would not be acceptable in a more normal situation. Specifically, two such steps that I can think of are:


You could write a letter to the schools to which you applied (specifically, email it to the admissions committee, and make sure to cc a staff member and ask for an acknowledgement) in which you explain the situation. If your letter is well-written and the explanation that you offer is credible, this may counter the effect of the hypothetical damaging letter from the professor. You may want to line up another letter writer in advance of sending your letter to substitute for the bad one.
You could complain about the professor's behavior to the department chair or another professor you trust at your university, explain the details of the story, and ask them to write to the schools you applied to. This would not be a normal letter of recommendation. It should be an email sent directly to the admissions committee (rather than uploaded via some kind of automated system for LORs), again explaining the situation. Having the explanation come from the chair or another faculty member, if they agree to do it, will be more credible and increase the chances of success. In fact, the chair may very well know of similar stories of odd behavior involving your professor that you were not aware of, which he could mention or hint at in his/her letter, further strengthening the credibility of your claims.


Note that in both of these suggestions you will have to disclose all the information about what took place between you and your professor to make the explanation credible and have a realistic hope that the professor's false accusations will be ignored. If some of what took place is embarrassing or damaging to you due to real rather than imagined reasons, I'm afraid that's just a risk you'll have to take. Good luck!