Posted on 05/16/2014 7:35:47 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
SI.com has learned that Clippers owner Donald Sterling has hired prominent antitrust litigator Maxwell Blecher, who has written a letter to NBA executive vice president and general counsel Rick Buchanan threatening to sue the NBA. The letter, sources tell SI.com, claims that Sterling has done nothing wrong and that "no punishment is warranted" for Sterling. Blecher also tells Buchanan that Sterling will not pay the $2.5 million fine, which is already past due. Blecher ends the letter by saying this controversy "will be adjudicated."
Blecher's letter makes clear what many have anticipated: Donald Sterling will not go down without a fight and that he is taking active steps toward litigation. A letter of this type is considered a precursor to the filing of a lawsuit. Blecher's letter offers no ambiguity about Sterling's intentions.
"We reject your demand for payment," the letter tells Buchanan, who on May 14 informed Sterling by letter that he must pay the $2.5 million fine.
Blecher's letter goes on to identify two basic legal defenses for Sterling.
First, Blecher claims that Sterling has not violated any article of the NBA constitution. The letter curiously references Article 35, which governs players' misconduct, and several other provisions. The NBA is expected to argue that Sterling violated Article 13(d) among other provisions. Article 13 (d) bars owners from violating contractual obligations, including the obligation that owners no engage in unethical conduct or take positions adverse to the NBA. Blecher does not explain how he intends to prove Sterling's racist remarks captured on the secret recording -- followed by Sterling's incendiary remarks to Anderson Cooper about Magic Johnson -- do not give rise to unethical conduct or positions adverse to the NBA.
(Excerpt) Read more at sportsillustrated.cnn.com ...
But Sterling is a lawyer too along with obviously, he must have the best legal advice money can be. As I’ve said all along, this isn’t over till it’s over. It seems this issue can go all kinds of ways, into anti-trust, etc. I don’t think it’s necessarily that because the NBA says this, Donald Sterling has to do it.
Exactly, there’s a whole lot more at issue here than just the NBA punishing their perceived bad boy.
The only person in all this who says anything about Sterling selling at less than market value is you. He’s not going to sell at less than market, and he definitely won’t sell for less than he paid. There’s no reason for you to keep harping on those things that simply will not happen.
His strongest defense is that they are punishing him now for a private conversation when they didn’t punish him a decade ago when he lost a federal lawsuit for discriminating against black and Hispanic tenants.
As if a vaguely racist statement to his interracial mistress now is worse than the actual discrimination against minority tenants then.
As human beings we all make mistakes and say idiotic things in private at times. Sterling is no exception. He should not have been cheating on his wife and cavorting with bimbos bent on entrapping him in private conversations to begin with. Had Sterling said such things in public or to his employees that would be one thing. But it was private conversation between two individuals not meant for public consumption. Sterling’s biggest sin in this whole matter is being unfaithful to his wife. But no is bringing that issue up-—maybe perhaps because of Magic Johnson. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone at Donald Sterling. I think the guy is an idiot and a philanderer. And in that regard Sterling has plenty of company in the NBA.
Sterling said things but all the same, it’s not like he using a bunch of racial epithets and the like. Now, Rollie Massimino, does allege Sterling made statements before that did use such terms. But that is in the past as was the housing discrimination. NBA should have dealt with this problem then.
It’s not like a franchise it is a franchise. If they vote him out he will, eventually, be out. Can he tie it up in court? Sure. For a long time? Yes. Until he dies? At 81 probably. Will he win the court cases? No, eventually the Sterling family will be forced out.
The thing is very often people who do stupid things are not punished at all by the league, either enforce the rules equally or get rid of them.
As human beings we all screw our pooch once in a while. That’s what Sterling did. Just because it started as a private conversation that didn’t stop it from going public, it made headlines, it damaged the shield, that puts him in violation of the franchise agreement. And if he doesn’t pay his fine that’ll be another violation making it even easier for them to oust him.
Sterling’s biggest sin was not understanding that for a public figure there is no private. I’m without that sin, and I’ll cast the stone. In the internet age any expression of your darkest thoughts can quickly become public, especially when you’re a public figure, especially when you’re a public figure disliked by your peers and the people paid to cover your actions. Really he’s lucky, none of this is really new behavior for him, he’s had much more public incidents that somehow managed to not become big stories. That protected him for years, eventually though that luck was going to run out. And now here he is.
It’s about the headlines, the wife has just as many issues as he does, and they finally became headlines during the course of this. Getting rid of him and keeping her won’t help the PR problem, so the NBA will dump them both.
More importantly, where did the recording come from and who released it? In California the way in which the recording was made is illegal. Mark Levin did a commentary in this, where he pointed out that according to the NBA’s constitution the commissioner did not have the authority to levy a $2.5 million fine. I would fight it too and force the issue. Again, how was the conversation recorded and obtained? The law is squarely on Sterling’s side.
I think the young commish took some bad advise from one of the owners. He will now get a lesson in brass tacks and costly legal entanglements.
So it’s about who the leftist media decides to target that the NBA will punish. Great to know.
All professional sports should lose their trust status.
Well, I disagree with your contention that Sterling is a public person. He is not a politician or a celebrity. He is a private businessman.
If saying something stupid or cheating on your spouse are grounds for removal from the NBA, then the NBA could probably discharge about 90% of its members including both owners and players.
It’s about who fed fuel to the fire. The leftist media never made Mrs Sterling knock on all the doors of her apartment buildings and lie about who she was to figure out if they had “too many” of certain races. And the media also didn’t sit on it in the past, it just never gained steam.
The NBA doesn’t have anti-trust status.
That might have been my fault to bring up anti-trust suits, I take that blame. But Donald Sterling has legal advice too. A lot of people simply don’t like paraphrasing Allen West, having your property confiscated from you because of a thought crime.
You seem awfully confident in your assessment but I can not help but still think, Sterling has a fighting chance of beating this.
He IS a celebrity. Even before all this happened he was one of the better known NBA owners, cheapskate Sterling who went out of his way for decades to not put a good team on the court. His non-NBA business may be private, but as an NBA owner he was never private, preferring front row seats to the owners box, he was always very public.
It’s not about the saying of stupid things. It’s about the generation of negative headlines that damage the whole. He made headlines, and those headlines caused his previous issues to get dredged up. He made the bed, now gets to get kicked out of it.
It’s not thought crime, it’s generating bad headlines. Nobody cares what he thinks, if that was the issue they’d have dumped him a long time ago. He embarrassed the league, and the fact that he has a history of problems made it worse.
He signed on to own a franchise, and that mean following those rules. Those rules let them kick him out. Which is why he will eventually lose.
This is the first year in a long time that the NBA has been entertaining. I hope Sterling stays healthy. This is great stuff.
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