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sports Court, brought to you by Handy Law Utah, Handy
and Handy, Big Firm Experience, Small Firm Attention. It's time
to play Judge Jerry. What's the verdicon on the biggest
headlines and sports and law today? A little sport Court action.
We break down the real life legal drama intersecting your
favorite athletes, teams, lead e et cetera, contract disputes and
i okaos, online scandals, you name it, we break it down.
Courtroom battles and more. And as I mentioned, always brought
to you by Handy and Handy Handy law utah dot.
I'm Garrett and Preston Handy on the line. Gentlemen, how
you guys doing today?
Speaker 3: Hey? Doing well? Ben? How you doing? Ben?
Speaker 1: Living your dream?
Speaker 2: Guys love to break down all the news. Hey man,
no room for improvement? Is my grandpa? You say, no
room for improvement? All is well in my world.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: Just gratitude, just a lot of gratitude for all the blessings.
Speaker 1: So guys, let's break this down.
Speaker 2: I'm just glad I'm not in a courtroom right now
we're being sued for anything.
Speaker 1: Uh follow up, I have a little follow.
Speaker 2: Up on the NBA betting scandal, the bombshell that shook
the basketball we'll shoot the sports world last week.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we want to talk about this. You know, as
we know, last week we jumped in on this bombshell
that Chauncey Phillips was arrested in the part of a
mafia run a poker scheme, and the other one was
Terry Rosier and another player were arrested in a bet
manipulating thing where they had essentially Terry Rozier was sharing
inside information on players health, who was going to play,
who wasn't going to play, that affected prop bets. Also,
there was a situation where Terry Rozier took himself out
of a game that apparently caught the tension of a lot.
And so what happened is the Department of Justice, the
FBI came in and arrested Terry Rozier. That's where we're
going to focus today. That's the criminal side of the things.
And as you can guess, Terry Rosier's lawyer came in
and with the big statement that, oh, how dare he
how dare they do this? He would never do that.
Blah blah blah blah blah. That's kind of how they
respond to it. But you're up against the Department of Justice. Well,
this caught the attention of Congress, and we're going to
talk a little bit about the legislative legislative side of
law things today. Well, sports betting, as we know, has
become a big deal. You know, you can anybody can
sports bet with their phone. Well, for a long time
there was there was some legislation. It was called the
Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, and that was a
federal act that you know, kind of regulated sports betting. Well,
that went out of the way in twenty eighteen, and
they essentially said, hey, let's let states. Let's set states
deal with how they want to deal with sports betting,
and most of the states did. Thirty ninited the states
had legislation in place, and the main thing was, you know,
sports betting, it's always hey, how does it infect the
integrity of the game, And there's always thought that, you know,
betting is going to it invites corruption, especially if it
gets in involved players or people involved in the game.
You know, most famously Pete Rose, who bet on baseball.
But now that things are so loosey goosey and anybody
can bet on anything. And as we see with the
allegations on Terry Rozier, congresses come in and they want answers,
and so they have sent a letter to the NBA,
the Commerce Department, who kind of oversees these things and
has authority over professional sports. They want answers, and they said,
dear mister Silver, we're talking about Adam Silver. They said,
this is a matter of Congressional concern. The integrative NBA
games must be trustworthy, free from influence of organized crime
and gambling relate activity sports betting. Scandals like this lead
American public to assume that sports are corrupt. So they're
going to the NBA and say, hey, we need answers.
One of the things they want is they want documentation
of the the internal investigation that the NBA did into
Terry Rozier. We talked about We've talked about this on
our Sports Court program, where the NBA got caught into
this with the Johnte Porter and Terry Rozier, and they
did an internal investigation. They came up with they didn't
think there was a deal there. And Adam Silver has
come out and said, well, you know, the Partner of
Justice has a lot more authority with subpoena power and
things like that, investigative power to get into this. So
he says, we're going to just let them do it.
But Congress, you know, they like to sometimes puff and
puff and puff and stuff, but you know, they want
to look out for the public. The perception of this,
and so they want the documentation, they want to look
at it, and the question is will there be federal legislation?
You know, they'll look into this and see if there's
something that should be handled on the federal level. A
lot of people think things told just be handled on
the state level. But it's caught their attention and giving
them something to do.
Speaker 2: Right now, Well, I mean, so much craziness here, and
it just calls into question the integrity of sport. We
know that betting has been a part of sport for
a long time.
Speaker 1: Lit'sten.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't want to be disingenuous. I mean,
like you know, from Pete Rose and others in the past,
we can go into baseball, football, basketball. I do feel though,
like you know, football is still very It's less manipulated.
You know, I love my Mike Gridiron, not to say
it hasn't happened, but I feel like it'd be really
hard to uh to manipulate football in the betting schemes, right.
Speaker 3: Don't I don't know. I mean again, you know we
know that now that lines and you know, teams being
favored are so driven by oh you hear that the
starting quarterbacks out you know, and that will change everything,
you know, and if someone, if someone has inside information
in whatever sports it is, it probably can you know,
affect the line and people betting and all of that. So,
I don't know. I think that the eruption is the
chance for corruption is probably widespread.
Speaker 1: It's everywhere.
Speaker 3: We haven't heard about one in football, but it's just
a matter of time till we do. You know, like
someone deflating footballs and stuff like that. I don't know
if there were, I don't know if they were bets
on that. You know, it interesting to know someone that
caught win that. Oh hey, uh, there might be footballs
that aren't up to the correct PSI and that's going
to help somebody And I'm going to bet that way.
I'm just glabbing on here.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: No, I remember that someone, yeah, becomes privy to the
PSIS of a football and willing to bet heavily in
favor of the PSI team. Anyways, Brady Gate, if you
will to flay Gate, Let's move on to.
Speaker 1: The NCAA real quick. NCAA has been ordered.
Speaker 2: To pay eighty million to a former football player and
wife in a concussion lawsuit.
Speaker 1: What's going on?
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, we've seen a lot of concussion losses over
the years, but I mean this one is really jumping
out of people. Won the size of it, right, eighteen
million dollars, but two because this involves his name is
Robert Gaithers and he played for South Carolina State in
the late seventies. So he's sixty eight years old, and
so just now bring this bringing this case and this
this kind of reminds me of basically kind of the
big tobacco litigation, right where you're saying, hey, you guys
knew about the harms and you you know, you didn't
share this information, and it said you allowed us to
go out and you know, get injured. And that's that's
what his argument is, is that the NCAA knew about
the effects of concussions for a long time and they
didn't share this information and they didn't protect their players.
So he now has it sounds like pretty severe dementia.
He's sixty eight years old at this point in his life,
and filed this case back in twenty nineteen, and you
can kind of see how slow it can take sometimes,
but this case went all the way to trial. I mean,
this is a jury verdict. He was awarded ten million
dollars and eight million dollars was awarded to his wife
for what's called loss of consortium. Kind of what she's
lost in this, in losing a spouse and a partner
that she now cares for.
Speaker 3: It sounds like I have.
Speaker 4: To think that that the you know, the Plaineffs lawyers
here Gay Theirs lawyers, they must have had some very
good experts lined up in this case to testify about
his dementia and essentially that he has CTE. Again, usually
CTE we've seen as not diagnosed. It's a post mortem
diagnosis that happens and this you know, this plane if
he's alive. So they've had to, you know, had good
experts to be able to come in and say that
there is a link between the dementia that he has
today and his football playing days in the late seventies
with South Carolina State. So it must have been very compelling,
I think for a jury to hear this, and they
must have had some again, some compelling evidence that the
inset of had prior knowledge that about these risks, and
that these risks went really above and beyond just your
the regular risks that you associate with playing with football.
Playing football, Right, we all know that if you play football,
you know, it's a it's a violent sport and you
could be injured to you know, break a leg or
twist an ankle, or blowout in the ear or whatever.
But the concussion claim is more specific, right that they
knew about this and didn't tell anybody, and so big
verdict sending some shockwaves in the insula if they decide
if they're going to kill this case or not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you wonder does this open up a few other
options for for people that have had concussive blows, fraumatic
brain injuries, et cetera, to maybe litigate.
Speaker 3: It.
Speaker 4: Does it does? And I think it's going to you know,
bring up an issue for the instead of a to
decide how they're going to deal with this. Right, we're
talking potentially thousands and thousands of cases, right, do they
want to you know, we've seen you know, with the
in the NFL, right in their concussion lawsuit. You know, uh,
where they set inside money. They may need to do
something like that because I think it's pretty could be
pretty widespread.
Speaker 2: The liability liabilities liabilities never get caught in the situation
where you're held accountable with those liabilities. All right, so
uh more sport court action. Let's get into this uh
Sun's Mercury minority orders in lawsuit right now. Litigation is
going to be against Ishbiah and there's going to be
a counter suing as well.
Speaker 1: It sounds like in this particular case, give us a
breakdown here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so a couple of minority full disclosure we got
and I don't want to bore you. This isn't as
cool as you know, uh betting scandals in that time.
This is a billionaire minority owners suing suing billionaire owner
over some you know, kind of mundane stuff if you're
just looking at it. But this was two minority owners
who sued Legacy Corporation matt Ishbia back in June and said, hey,
we want to see the books, you know, and whenever
you've got partnerships and that type of thing, you know,
typically everyone there needs to be disclosures. So they said,
we need to see the books and we want to
see what's happening here. They that was their one claim,
and then they also sued matt Ishbia saying claiming that
he had reached fiduciae duties he failed to disclose certain
things that he had mismanaged and that he had entered
into a capitol call where he was trying to dilute
their ownership. So they have a lot of claims. Well,
the recent thing that's happened, a couple of things that's
happened is they have dismissed their portion of the lawsuit
about the documents. They've seen the books, but they said,
wait a minute, we're going to go forward with this
claim against you, you know, your mismanagement. And essentially their
claim is you're doing everything you can to delude our
shares well Ishia and they're saying, we think our shares
are worth a lot more. Well Ishbia has responded. He
has filed what's called a declaratory judgment. He wants the
court to come in and say, hey, you know what,
according to our operating agreement, I have a you know,
I'm the majority owner here. I had authority to do
this stuff, to make investments, to have a capital call,
to do all of this. So we want the court
to look at that. And you know they've all come
in there rattling their sabers. You know, the minority owners
said hey, you can come in here and say you
want to with declaratory judgment, you're soon us. But in
the end, really what that issue is here your mismanagement
and your breach of produciary duty. And so essentially there
are two claims. Are We've got really savvy business people
is saying, hey, you're trying to force the value to
this up, and we think I think you're trying to
force me to buy you out at amount that is
far greater than your market value. And they're saying, hey,
you are pushing the value down, so you can buy
us out for an amount that's far lower on that
So this litigation will go. But my guess is ISBA says, hey,
I don't need to buy you out, but you know,
there might be a settlement where they do buy them
out as something that's agreeable to everyone. But you know, again,
these are just high stakes things. And apparently these two
minority owners. I thought it was interesting that they were
part of the prior ownership when Sarbor owned the team,
and when ISHBA came in and bought it, they maintained
their ownership.
Speaker 2: I mean that whole entire Look, I'm from Phoenix, I'm
in Arizona, and like it's just sad. What's happened with
the entire organization since Colangelo laughed us. It's been bad.
It's a it's an age, it's an era by gone,
and I don't know if we'll ever be the same.
Let's talk about Alabama's and eighty is having to testify
in a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times.
Speaker 1: What's cooking here?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's kind of interesting. It grows out of a
story that came out a couple of years ago. Back then.
This is twenty twenty three, in March. March Madness in
Alabama was a number one seed that year, and there
was a shooting involving an Alabama player and another player
who was in a car. Anyway, it was kind of
big news, a tragic story. A woman was killed at
the scene. And what happened in the aftermath of this
is where this kind of case comes about. Is the
New York Times wrote a story about this murder and
named another Crimson tied Alabama player, Ky Spears, in the
story at that and said that he was present at
the time of the shooting. Well, as you can imagine,
I mean, if you're named in a story like this,
you know big murder investigation and story. You know, his
life got blown up for a little while there, you know,
with text messages and people reaching out to him, and
and he's saying, hey, wait a minute, this is this
is totally an accurate information. I was not at the scene.
I wasn't there. And so early on in this in
this reporting that took place, he and his father and
apparently their attorney had reached out to The New York
Times to get them to correct the story and to
retract it and correct the fact that he was not there,
and the Times didn't do that. Eventually they did, but
nonetheless he's brought Now, so what it's this is is
a defamation lost it against the New York Times for
improperly naming him as being, you know, at the scene
of this crime. And he's arguing again for a defamation
case that these statements were untrue and that it's it's
harmed him, it's damaged him right in his life. The
New York Times is arguing, there's a doctrine of what's
called substantial truth. They're saying, well, maybe we didn't get
every single detail correct in this story, but the gist
of it, right, is true, and Spears was on the team,
and so really it's a defamation case I mean involves
this former Alabama basketball player. But you know, with athletes
being in the news all the time with different incidents,
you know, sometimes you get kind of a tangential legal
issue like this one here where it's a defamation lawsuit growing.
Speaker 3: Out of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so be careful with your reporting, right, I know.
Speaker 2: No, it's funny because I mean sports radio sometimes we
get into like ideation mode, right. Any ideation mode is
where we're like we're pontificating and we're elaborating.
Speaker 1: We're like what if is it? Could this happen?
Speaker 2: Or could that is it? You got to be very
careful during ideation mode. So you don't want to, you know,
be too declared if this is just a theory. Right,
But where you go, I don't I don't know where
you from a urbage standpoint, what's protected language as it
pertains to you know, defamatory you know, you know defamation cases, right,
I don't know what would be considered defamation in that
situation when you're just kind of ideating, is there any
protective language?
Speaker 3: Well? Right, and they're and they're not.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean, the New York
Times has some some journalists standards they need, like any
any publisher, right that they need to live up to,
and they've got to have sources and to be able
to corroborate this information. And apparently what had happened is
they had called him to get a to get a
quote before they published the story. But this player he
abided by Alabama you know, ad department rules, which was
no comment. Right, you're not going to comment on this story.
We don't want it getting involved in this. So he
says no comment. The Times go ahead, goes ahead and
publishes their story naming him there at the scene. So,
I mean, would have been a different story had he
talked to the reporter and tried to correct that at
that time and said, hey, I don't you know you're
barking up the wrong tree. I wasn't there, perhaps right,
But he went with the school's guidance, which was to
not comment.
Speaker 2: That's our sport cord for the day, guys. That's the
verdict on this week's session. Powered by Handy and Handy
Handy Law Utah dot Com. Personal attention, proven result of
proven results, serious sports, serious questions, serious attorneys, guys. What
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Speaker 3: Yeah, Ben, we love coming on here with you and
doing sports cord interesting stories in the world of sports.
As you mentioned, we are a personal injury law firm.
We help people that have been involved in all kinds
of accents where they've suffered injury and damages in the
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more personalized, small firm where you know, people come in
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And we think that people that you know, really do
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give us a call. We'd love to hear from anyone
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you can submit your questions and would love to hear
from you.
Speaker 2: Call them today, set up an appointment today. If you've
been in an accident, free consultation. You don't have to
pay until they win. Call them today. Eight on one
two six four six six seven seven. That's eight A
one two six four sixty six seven seven gentlemen, Always
a pleasure, Thanks for hopping on today.
Speaker 3: Hey, thanks Ben, Thank you.
Speaker 2: Always a great time with Preston and Garrett Handy. Appreciate
them elaborating on all of the drama, the legal drama
intersecting sports in in this week.
Speaker 1: So appreciate them. Let's take a brief time out, we'll
be back.
Speaker 2: Don't go anywhere and more to get to This is
Cougar Sports one of three nine ninety eight point three
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