Plan B Forum

Lord Jim wrote:I was going to start a thread about this...

This guy is really the poster boy for the saying, "when you're in a hole......"

Sources: Sterling might sue NBA

Banned Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling isn't going away without a fight.

Sterling's lawyer has informed the NBA that Sterling will not be paying the $2.5 million fine levied against him last month by commissioner Adam Silver, sources confirmed to ESPN.com on Thursday night.

That fine was due this week, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.

In a letter sent on Sterling's behalf, antitrust litigator Max Blecher also threatened to sue the league if Sterling is not afforded due process.

According to a report on SI.com, the letter was sent Wednesday and asserts that "no punishment is warranted" for Sterling, who was banned for life and fined $2.5 million for racist remarks he made that were published by TMZ. The letter claims Sterling has not breached the NBA constitution and that his "due process rights" were violated by the league's four-day investigation.

"I'm a good member who made a mistake," Sterling told CNN earlier this week. "Am I entitled to one mistake, am I after 35 years? I mean, I love my league, I love my partners. Am I entitled to one mistake? It's a terrible mistake, and I'll never do it again."

Sterling's ability to remain owner of the Clippers rests in the hands of the NBA's other 29 owners, who are expected to vote on the matter. A 75 percent majority is needed to oust Sterling. In the interim, the league has made Dick Parsons the CEO of the franchise.

According to the NBA bylaws, Sterling's ownership also could be terminated if he does not pay the fine within 30 days of written notice from the commissioner that he is in default on the payment.

The NBA's constitution, which Sterling signed as controlling owner of the Clippers, gives its board of governors broad latitude in league decisions.

The key to the NBA's authority, attorneys say, is Article 13(d) of the league's constitution. That section says that, whether Sterling intended to or not, an owner cannot "fail or refuse to fulfill" contractual obligations to the NBA "in such a way to affect the Association or its members adversely."

Sterling's comments provoked threats of a player boycott, led sponsors to withdraw support and created a racially charged image problem in the midst of the NBA playoffs that even President Barack Obama remarked upon.

As long as the NBA meticulously follows its own constitution and rules regarding the Clippers sale, it will be difficult for Sterling to find a legal theory that would stand up in court, said Daniel Lazaroff, director of the Sports Law Institute at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

"This is not an antitrust issue. This is not a First Amendment issue," Lazaroff said. "It's a question limited to the interpretation of the NBA constitution and bylaws, and whether those terms are met."

If he is forced out, Sterling still stands to reap a huge financial windfall in a Clippers sale. He bought the team for $12.5 million in 1981, and Forbes magazine recently placed its 2014 value at $575 million, or No. 13 in the NBA. There would be a sizable capital gains tax bill in any sale.

The Clippers' postseason run ended Thursday night when they lost 104-98 to Kevin Durant and the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 6 of the Western Conference semifinals.

Letter Contradicts Donald Sterling’s Vow to Fight Sale of Clippers

Donald Sterling appeared to authorize his wife, Rochelle, to negotiate a sale of the Los Angeles Clippers in a letter he sent to the N.B.A. through one of his longtime lawyers last Thursday.

The letter, a copy of which was obtained Wednesday by The New York Times, stands in stark contrast to a 32-page document Sterling and his legal team sent to the N.B.A. Tuesday night in which he vowed to fight the league in its efforts to strip him of his ownership of the Clippers.

The letter, which was signed by Sterling, was addressed to Commissioner Adam Silver and Richard Buchanan, the league’s vice president and general counsel.

It reads, in part: “This letter confirms that Donald T. Sterling authorizes Rochelle Sterling to negotiate with the National Basketball Association regarding all issues in connection with a sale of the Los Angeles Clippers team, owned by LAC Basketball Club, Inc.”

Sterling, though, went back on the offensive Tuesday night in response to the N.B.A.'s formal charges that he had engaged in conduct that damaged the league and its partners. Sterling and his legal team argued that the remarks at the center of the league’s case against him were “illegally recorded” and were made during what he considers a “lovers’ quarrel” with a companion.

One of his lawyers, Maxwell M. Blecher, later said that Sterling was disavowing anything his wife was doing to sell the team.

“He’s not interested in selling,” Blecher said in an interview with ESPN. “He’s going to fight to the bloody end.”

Rochelle Sterling, who co-owns the team with her husband through a family trust, has been entertaining offers from potential buyers. Her lawyer, Pierce O’Donnell, said in an interview Tuesday that she was working “furiously” to complete a sale and had received the cooperation of the N.B.A.

Donald Sterling, 80, was barred from the N.B.A. for life last month for making racist remarks, which were recorded. A hearing has been scheduled for next Tuesday, when a vote of three-fourths of the league’s owners would be required to force a sale of the franchise.

Mike Bass, an N.B.A. spokesman, said Tuesday that it “would be a preferred outcome if the Sterlings were to voluntarily transfer 100 percent of the ownership in the team to new owners, rather than to have their ownership in the team terminated.”

Donald Sterling’s lawyer says client “far from mentally incompetent”

If you can only be sure of three things they should be death, taxes, and that Donald Sterling was going to fight the idea that he was mentally incapacitated (and the sale of “his” Clippers to Steve Ballmer).

Donald’s wife Shelly, who owns half of the Clippers through the Sterling Family Trust, reportedly had Donald declared mentally incapacitated under the terms of the trust (which had contingencies for such things). With that done she reached an agreement to sell the Clippers to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer for $2 billion. The league has been informed of the sale and is awaiting the paperwork.

Donald Sterling will fight it all, that’s how he’s wired, starting with the suggestion he is mentally incapacitated. Ramona Shelburne of ESPN received and email from Donald Sterling’s attorney.

Notice he says “incompetent” as opposed to her attorney’s wording of “incapacitated,” arguing over the minutia of those kinds of definitions and how it applies to a broader document is what lawyers do. Whether or not Donald Sterling is by definition incapacitated depends on the terms in the trust, plus what was found on the neurological exams. We cannot judge Sterling’s mental state from the edited snippets of the CNN interview with Anderson Cooper we saw. There have been reports Sterling was suffering from some form of dementia (as well as prostate cancer) but the only evidence is with the doctors (who are the only people qualified to judge the evidence).

Whether what Shelly Sterling did will hold up in court remains to be seen.

Which is why the league has said it is awaiting all the details and paperwork of the sale to Ballmer and for now is still moving ahead with plans for a June 3 Board of Governors meeting on the issue. At that meeting other 29 NBA owners would conduct a hearing then vote on whether to strip Sterling of his ownership of the franchise in response to the backlash that followed his prejudiced comments on a recording released to TMZ, plus later in a CNN interview. The NBA has filed official charges against Donald Sterling, as required by its constitution, and he has responded through his attorney.

Bottom line: This is all headed to the courts. As expected. But know that sources say the NBA worked with Shelly Sterling to make sure all her ducks were in a row on this — the league would prefer the voluntary sale to them taking over the team.

DONALD STERLING, BAD PENNY, WILL NEVER STOP TURNING UP

by Lisa Needham on June 10, 2014 at 9:30 am

It seems like only last month we told you racist fuckwit Donald Sterling was going to profit from the sale of the Los Angeles Clippers to the tune of the budget of a small country or so, except it was superduper complicated and involved him being declared mentally incapacitated by his own wife. Good times. You did, of course, know that this was not going to be the end of Donald Dumb, right?

First, Sterling sued the NBA, but then he pulled the suit and was ostensibly supporting the deal, probably because he would be making a kazillion dollars from the sale of his not actually all that great basketball team. Now he’s no longer supporting the deal and the suit is back on because Donald Sterling is a meatsack of hateful entitlement who will never go away.

Donald Sterling issued a one-page statement dated Monday titled “The Team is not for Sale” and said that “from the onset, I did not want to sell the Los Angeles Clippers.” [...]

“I have decided that I must fight to protect my rights,” Donald Sterling said. “While my position may not be popular, I believe that my rights to privacy and the preservation of my rights to due process should not be trampled. I love the team and have dedicated 33 years of my life to the organization. I intend to fight to keep the team.”

“While my position may not be popular” may be the understatement of the decade. Donald Sterling, nobody likes you. Nobody! Oh, except fellow idiot traveler Donald, Donald Trump. He thinks you’re pretty neat, but that is not actually a good thing.

Sterling being Sterling being an asshole, he’s trying to spin this like he was all set to drop the suit but then the NBA done him dirty and lied to him about how they’d totally modify his fine and ban and probably buy him some chocolates and cuddle with him, an argument to which the NBA essentially responded “haha NOPE.” We’ve never loved a conglomeration of capitalist pigs so much.

The weirdness of this lawsuit also too means that even if Sterling wins, he’s winning against himself, basically.

Shelly Sterling utilized her authority as sole trustee of The Sterling Family Trust, which owns the Clippers, to take bids for the team and ultimately negotiate a deal with Ballmer. [...]

An individual familiar with the negotiations who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly said Monday that there were two options for Donald Sterling — to either sign or go to court. But even if he wins in court, he’s ultimately winning a judgment against himself because his wife Shelly Sterling has agreed to indemnify the NBA against all lawsuits, including by her husband, the individual said.

The deal, if it goes through, also allows the lady Sterling to spin off $200 million or so of the sale into a charity that she and possible future owner/gazillionaire Steve Ballmer would run.

Man, Shelly Sterling must hate him SO MUCH. We would. Of course, we’d hate ourselves for ever having married an angry bag of skin like Donald Sterling, so she is probably operating from some really really deep levels of self-loathing and revenge here. We wish her all the best. Good luck and godspeed.

While suing the NBA probably won't allow Sterling to hold onto the Clippers, he may have another legal angle that could pose a major challenge for the NBA. Sterling could sue his wife, arguing she had no legal right to seize control of the trust and thus had no right to sell the team. According to reports, Shelly Sterling took over the family trust after her husband was declared mentally incompetent due to early dementia. It remains unclear how Donald Sterling was declared incompetent and whether a judge agreed or would agree with this declaration.

A dispute over mental competency could prove lengthy and acrimonious. For Donald Sterling, it may prove a worthwhile fight: if he was not mentally incompetent, then Shelly Sterling may have lacked the legal authority to act on behalf of the family trust. In that scenario, it is unclear how she could strike a deal with Ballmer or indemnify the NBA on behalf of the trust (she would still be able to indemnify the NBA on behalf of herself). It would be similarly unclear how she became the official voice of the Clippers when she is not the Clippers' representative on the Board of Governors.