November 6, 2009 6:07 PM

The Scandalous Chronicles: A Quick (and Ugly) Look at Sports and the Law

Posted by Zach Lowe

It can't be easy being Donald Sterling's lawyer, a role Manatt, Phelps  & Phillips partner Robert Platt has played for the controversial owner of the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers for more than two decades. We're pretty confident Sterling, who is not exactly hurting for money, pays his bills on time. But he has also been involved in a fair number of ugly court cases over the last few years, including one brought by the U.S. Department of Justice accusing Sterling of discriminating against minority tenants--or potential tenants--in the 5,000 or so apartment units Sterling's companies manage in Los Angeles County.

Sterling and the DOJ settled the suit for $2.73 million this week--the largest-ever DOJ settlement in a housing discrimination suit. Sterling will pay $2.63 million into a fund for people harmed by the alleged discrimination and $100,000 in fines to the U.S. government, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Platt tells us that Sterling denies all of the DOJ allegations and settled the case only because the litigation projected to cost more than the settlement amount. "We thought the case was without merit," Platt says.

The complaint accused Sterling of telling his employees he preferred Korean tenants to African-Americans or Hispanics, the LAT says. Federal prosecutors had a witness ready to testify that fewer African-Americans and Hispanics lived in Sterling's buildings than neighborhood demographics would have suggested, the LAT reports.

This isn't the first discrimination suit against the Clips owner. In 2005, Sterling came to a confidential settlement with a group of tenants who filed a suit making similar claims. And his most famous ex-employee, former Clips general manager and Lakers star Elgin Baylor, filed suit recently against the Clippers, accusing the team of discriminating against minorities and older employees. Platt is also representing the team in that suit, and has told us Baylor's claims are "ridiculous."

• We move from one ugly lawsuit to another, only this one is a bit more...awkward. Sean Salisbury, a former quarterback in the National Football League and ex-ESPN analyst, has hired a powerful Dallas lawyer for a suit accusing a popular Gawker Media sports blog of libel. The suit accuses the blog, Deadspin, of defaming Salisbury in several posts in which they claimed Salisbury lost his jobs at ESPN and a Dallas radio station after showing female staffers photos of his penis captured on his cell phone. Salisbury's lawyer, Jeffrey Tillotson, name partner at Lynn Tillotson Pinker & Cox, says Salisbury never lost a job because of any cell phone photo incident. Tillotson has accused Deadspin and Gawker--as well as A.J. Daulerio, Deadspin's top editor--of pursuing something of a vendetta against Salisbury. (If you feel like you remember Tillotson's name, it could be because he is representing Laura Pendergest-Holt, the chief investment officer for alleged mega-fraudster Allen Stanford and the first person to be charged criminally in the Stanford case. Tillotson also defended the singer George Michael against defamation charges stemming from comments Michael made about a police officer who arrested him for soliciting sex. In several interviews, Michael claimed the officer exposed his own genitals first; the parties reached a confidential settlement, Tillotson said). 

Gawker has retained Vinson & Elkins partner Michael Raiff, the firm says. Gawker has said publicly that Salisbury's suit is groundless. Salisbury is, of course, a public figure, meaning he will have to show Deadspin knew the information it reported was false and published it anyway out of malice toward the ex-QB. If the reports were accurate, Salisbury has no case, and Gawker execs have hinted fairly strongly that they believe the reports are indeed accurate. 

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