Tip the Scales

Supersonic Legal Troubles

As a young man, Clay Bennett dreamt of owning a pro sports team and in July 2006 the ‘King of Coffee’ made it come true. For the ‘venti’ cost of 91 million mocha lattes ($350 million), Starbucks founder Howard Schultz sold Bennett the Seattle Supersonics. There was one stipulation. Bennett had to make a good faith effort to keep Seattle’s oldest pro sports franchise under the shadow of the Space Needle.

Bennett spent the next 2 years making what NBA observers call a “lame duck” effort to dodge the stipulation. His ploy fooled everyone except the NBA front office, and 2 years later it seemed Bennett would move the Sonics to his hometown of Oklahoma City. The fans of Seattle were outraged, but the teams’ fate was sealed.

To add insult to injury, Bennett planned to move the Sonics from Seattle immediately by breaking a contract with Key Arena, The Sonics home since the teams inception in 1966. He claimed multiple times that the team is losing too much money to justify keeping it in Seattle through the duration of the arena contract in 2010. In a video deposition Bennett testified that the losses could be absorbed without hardship, a stark contrast to his previous comments. This could be a major setback in his plans to get the team out of town before 2010. Digital Litigation may delay the execution but can it help avoid it all together?

Emails written 2 days Before Benner took ownership have surfaced recently, in which he makes it very clear to his partners that he has no intention of keeping the team if they can’t be moved to Oklahoma City. The emails are digital evidence of Bennett’s intention to breach the sales contract and now Schultz is suing to reverse the sale and regain ownership of the Sonics. His legal team will be wise to present these emails to jurors using multimedia trial support.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=3430610