PACQUIAO SUES MAYWEATHERS, ETC.; SALUD SAYS IT'S ABOUT TIME
By Ronnie Nathanielsz
PhilBoxing.com
Thu, 31 Dec 2009
Pound-for-pound king Manny Pacquiao has gone through with his announced intention to file a lawsuit against Floyd Mayweather Jr, his father Floyd Mayweather Sr, uncle Roger Mayweather, Golden Boy Promotions executives Oscar De La Hoya and CEO Richard Schaefer for making false and defamatory statements accusing Pacquiao of taking performance enhancing drugs.
Pacquiao has retained top class lawyer Daniel Petrocelli of the Los Angeles based law firm of O'Melveny & Myers LLP. He is the lawyer who won millions of dollars in a wrongful death case filed against O.J. Simpson in 1997.
The lawsuit was filed in federal district court in Las Vegas, Nevada, and seeks compensatory and punitive damages for defendants' wrongful conduct in excess of $75,000 plus punitive damages. Petrocelli said the figure is “simply the minimum that one has to allege in order to sue in federal court. The damage in this case for Pacquiao’s reputation are in the tens of millions of dollars, not including punitive damages.”
The suit claims that the Mayweathers, De La Hoya and Schaefer knows that Pacquiao had never taken performance-enhancing drugs, “knew their statements were false but made them anyway out of ill-will, spite, malice, revenge and envy.”
The eminent Philippine lawyer-sportsman Rudy Salud, founding secretary general of the World Boxing Council said it was high time Pacquiao filed a lawsuit. He said “I always wanted that because his image was suffering” even as Salud pointed out that “planting a seed of doubt in the minds of boxing fans in general about the merits of the victories of Pacquiao will go down in history and they will keep repeating that. This is bad.”
In filing the complaint Petrocelli said that "Manny Pacquiao's achievements come from God-given talent and an indefatigable work ethic -- not steroids. He cannot and will not allow others to deliberately misrepresent his years of hard work and tarnish his reputation."
The lawsuit was filed in federal district court in Las Vegas, Nevada, and seeks compensatory and punitive damages for defendants' wrongful conduct
Well known boxing writer David Mayo of the Grand Rapids Press quoted Petrocelli as saying that the lawsuit could be worth “in the tens of millions of dollars.” According to Mayo, Petrocelli said the allegations that Pacquiao used performance enhancing drugs were “inexcusable” and “unconscionable.”
Petrocelli told Mayo that Pacquiao has an unblemished reputation and is “one of the hardest-working, hardest-training athletes” with a world class reputation adding that “for these guys to publicly brand him a cheater is unconscionable. They have no evidence that he has ever taken steroids or any performance-enhancing drugs.” The lawyer said they were “out of bounds in their public comments and now they’ll have to be held accountable.”
Petrocelli maintained in his statements to the Grand Rapids Press “you don’t publicly state that a world class athlete – any athlete- is illegally taking drugs unless you know for a fact that they are doing so. Otherwise you’re breaking the law and you’re playing with a person’s rbeputation that has taken years of hard work to earn.”
He said the Mayweathers, De La Hoya and Schaefer have done “untold damage in the tnens of millions of dollars and we’re going to see that this doesn’t happen again and we’re going to recover for all the damage they have inflicted.”
Petrocelli disclosed that Pacquiao “did not relish” the thought of filing a lawsuit but said he had no choice given the statements that were made not once, not twice, but numerous times.”
Top photo: Daniel Petrocelli (L) files the case in behalf of Manny Pacquiao.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Ronnie Nathanielsz.
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