NEWS: Donnie Nelson sues Dallas Mavericks

[Jommybone]

Yeah I just read the headline initially and those were my initial thoughts. 

I then went through the court document after I made my post after seeing CJeter posted it. The timeline is important. I don't consider the timing of the lawsuit in any way suspect, but I do find the contents of the filing to be a little erratic and lacking for the accusations they've made. 

I'm no lawyer and have no idea how it'll play out, just seems like Donnie is trying to drag Cubes through the mud.

I’m a lawyer. Maybe I can help a little. But I haven’t read anything but the comments here. So take this with a grain of salt. (Not to mention the fact that I’m just some dude on the internet whose credentials you can’t check.)

1. It’s unfair to fault Donnie’s lack of evidence at this stage of the case. A lawsuit starts with the plaintiff’s allegations. There’s no requirement to put actual evidence into it, and doing so would be a waste of effort. Might also be a bad strategy. 

2. Also a little unfair to blame him for the petty or irrelevant stuff. There’s no harm in including too many accusations, and there is some potential harm in leaving out something that might matter. Plus, strategically, sometimes a plaintiff feels the need to drop a PR bomb. 

3. But Donnie’s retaliation claim seems really, really weird. At least as I understand it from the posts here. He didn’t know about his nephew getting harassed until after it was settled? And then he claims to have reported the harassment to Cuban, who obviously already knew about it? How is that reporting harassment? Or is he claiming that someone else was harassed too? If he’s just reporting his prediction that Lutin (is that the right name?) is likely to do it again, I don’t think that counts as reporting harassment. Without doing the legal research, I can’t be sure. But I sure wouldn’t think so. (For anyone truly motivated, the legal jargon is “protected activity.” You can’t retaliate against someone for engaging in protected activity.) Perhaps there’s a way to state it that doesn’t sound so weird. Is Donnie claiming he was retaliated against for raising concerns that others might be sexually harassed? I could get on board with that. But I can’t convince myself that anyone would ever offer to pay $52 million to cover up such a claim. 

4. Wow, that response from Cuban was strong! Last accusee I remember talking back like that was Bill O’Reilly. So . . . maybe not an indicator of innocence?