Attorney: Davis Will Sue The Chicago Sun-Times
Posted by jstevrtc on August 7th, 2010The battle…is now truly joined.
Late on Friday, an attorney representing Anthony Davis, Sr. told the Chicago Tribune that a lawsuit will be filed next week against Michael O’Brien and the Chicago Sun-Times.
According to the story at the online version of the Tribune, Mr. Davis’ attorney, Georgette Greenlee, told the paper that “It boggles our mind where O’Brien got his information from.”
The Sun-Times knew they could face legal action if they persisted with the story that the elder Davis had made a $200,000 deal with the Kentucky program in exchange for a commitment by the younger Anthony Davis, and after receiving that strongly-worded letter from lawyers representing UK, did they back down? Only temporarily, but then came back with a story in which O’Brien claimed he had three sources claiming that Mr. Davis was shopping his son. Kentucky’s press release on Friday afternoon stated that they would support “any action” that the Davis family took against O’Brien and the paper, and it looks like that’s exactly what’s going to happen next week, unless the Davises are attempting to call what they consider a bluff by the Sun-Times.
But both sides appear extremely confident in this matter, which means that each thinks it has a piece of trump-card information that will annihilate the other. If a lawsuit actually gets filed, it’ll be incredibly interesting to see what tidbits of information are revealed as a result of the discovery process. Will Michael O’Brien and the Sun-Times produce solid evidence that will support their article and implicate the Davises (and maybe Kentucky)? Or will we soon see Anthony Davis reviewing movies with Roger Ebert? It’ll be one heck of a showdown.
Anthony Davis faces a long, difficult lawsuit. In this country, it is up to the plaintiff to prove harm rather than the defense to prove no harm. Defamation suits hold a high bar with plentiful of legal precedence for the defense. In this country, we generally protect the media.
If the sports editor at the Chicago Sun Times did his or her job, then the article and the reporter’s notes and articles were vetted by the lawyers. As a group, there is nothing more cautious than lawyers working for media outlets. They generally err on the side of caution.
As to the three schools, I would start with DePaul, Ohio State, and Syracuse and work my way from there. I would look for three schools that dropped out of the recruiting process early because they lack the resources for such a player like a UIC or Southern Illinois.
Which is why this sounds like a Clemens/Bonds type of lawsuit. By the time it actually gets dismissed on its face for foolishness, the public has long forgotten about it (and Davis is likely already in the NBA).