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Lance Armstrong set to testify under oath after appeal refused in $12m case?

End in sight for dispute that dates back to 2004?

 

Former pro cyclist lance Armstrong is facing another court battle after a judge refused his appeal to have a dispute over bonus payments from his run of Tour de France wins dismissed.

SCA Promotions, a Dallas sports insurance company, is seeking to recover $12 million it paid Armstrong in 2006 after Armstrong sued to secure payment of win bonuses from his 2002, 2003 and 2004 Tour de France victories. SCA had refused to pay because of suspicions that Armstrong had doped to achieve those and other wins.

When Armstrong was stripped of those titles at the end of 2012 and confessed to doping on the Oprah Winfrey Show early the following year, SCA and others began to demand back money paid to Armstrong as win bonuses.

Lawyers for Armstrong and SCA have been going at it ever since. Armstrong’s lawyers say that the 2006 settlement was final and canot be reopened, while SCA’s accuse Armstrong of perjury when he claimed not to have used performance-enhancing drugs.

In this latest twist, the Texas Court of Appeals has sent the case back to the three-man arbitration panel that heard the 2006 case and that decided to reopen the case in October last year.

"Mr. Armstrong engaged in rampant perjury and committed outrageous acts of witness intimidation in his lawsuit with SCA," SCA's attorney, Jeffrey Tillotson, told Brent Schrotenboer of USA Today Sports. "With this opinion from the Court of Appeals, SCA will now proceed to have Mr. Armstrong punished for such conduct."

Armstrong and Tailwind Sports, the company that managed his former US Postal Service team, reached an out-of-court settlement with SCA Promotions in 2006 after he had sued it to pay the bonuses it had insured for winning the race in 2002, 2003 and 2004.

In 2013, after his televised confession to Oprah Winfrey that he had doped during all seven of those Tour de France wins, SCA sought to reopen the case and last October the same three-man arbitration panel that had heard the original proceedings agreed.

Since then, Armstrong and Tailwind Sports have tried to block the action, saying that the 2006 settlement means that SCA waived any rights to have the case reopened.

They cite a clause in the settlement that reads “no party may challenge, appeal or attempt to set aside" the money paid, and that the agreement is "fully and forever binding."

However, in a ruling on the case dated October 29 last year, two of the arbitrators, Richard Faulkner and Richard Chernick, describe that settlement as no more than “the private equivalent of temporary ‘cease-fire.’”

They added: “Hostilities between these parties resumed and continued as anticipated albeit at varying intensity. … The ability of both tribunals to address and determine disputes within the parameters of the parties’ agreements is unquestioned.”

The third member of the panel, Lyons, believes however that it has no power to “re-decide claims that were resolved seven years ago.”

He wrote: “What Armstrong did, if true, is morally reprehensible, but the law does not allow this Panel to address it at this time.”

Lyons was appointed to the panel – and is remunerated - by Armstrong, while Chernick is SCA’s appointee, and Faulkner was jointly appointed by both parties.

In late February, a judge in Dallas rejected his request to stop the arbitration panel from rehearing the case, and set a date of 17 March for it to be heard.

On Tuesday March 4, the Texas Fifth Court of Appeals called a halt to all proceedings and said that the court would review the entire case later that month.

That court has now decided to allow the arbitration panel to hear SCA’s case.

Armstrong has admitted lying under oath in a deposition he gave in 2005 relating to this case. It is unlikely he will face perjury proceedings in relation to that due to a statute of limitations.

His reluctance to submit himself to testifying under oath again as SCA wishes may partly be due to his insistence that he did not dope after he came out of retirement in 2009, something the United States Anti-Doping Agency said he did.

Any admission on Armstrong’s part that he did use performance-enhancing drugs during that period could result in his former sponsors seeking to recoup money from him, since such actions would not currently be time-barred.

In November last year, he avoided having to give sworn testimony in a case brought by Acceptance Insurance, which had insured his Tour de France bonuses from 1999 to 2001, by making a last-minute out-of-court settlement.

He still faces other lawsuits including one brought by former US Postal teammate Floyd Landis under whistleblower legislation relating to wrongful use of federal funds, which has been joined by the US Government.

That action could potentially see Armstrong hit with a penalty of up to nearly $100 million.

Simon 'legal eagle' MacMichael contributed to this story.

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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6 comments

Avatar
don simon fbpe | 10 years ago
0 likes

He should be left broke and broken, if only to show that cheating doesn't pay.

Avatar
madonepro replied to don simon fbpe | 10 years ago
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don simon wrote:

He should be left broke and broken, if only to show that cheating doesn't pay.

With that logic all bankers, politicians and ceo's should be put in that same basket!

Avatar
don simon fbpe replied to madonepro | 10 years ago
0 likes
madonepro wrote:
don simon wrote:

He should be left broke and broken, if only to show that cheating doesn't pay.

With that logic all bankers, politicians and ceo's should be put in that same basket!

Yes indeedy, if you follow the logic.

Avatar
Rupert replied to madonepro | 10 years ago
0 likes

12 million ? Just how much did Lance make in his career ?

And how much is he still earning.

Surely he can't be being paid that well these days as a bike mechanic doing information videos on how to replace an inner tube ? ?  7

Avatar
Son of Crunch | 10 years ago
0 likes

Armstrong - BORING!!!!  102

Avatar
portec replied to Son of Crunch | 10 years ago
0 likes
Son of Crunch wrote:

Armstrong - BORING!!!!  102

But not boring enough for you to resist going to the story and making a comment...  39

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