splitter
- and not Nebraska
Don't forget to mention Ohio State wrestling scandal. Let's just hope no one in that DA office ends up in Congress.
TSJ files lawsuit against Douglas Co. DA, Lawerence PD
- Status
Don't forget that Northwestern football AND basketball players participated in one of the biggest point shaving scandals in the history of college sports in the 90s. And the coaches knew about it as well and did nothing. But of course no penalty from the NCAA/Big Ten, and the Tribune/Medill School of Journalism/WSCR buried the story, as they have done so many times over the years. I bet 99% of all Cat graduates in the last 20 years have no knowledge of the scandal. Ignorance truly is bliss in Evanston.
Also, in the age of NIL what was and likely are the ripple effects that took marketing opportunities for TSJ. Those opportunities are gone that TSJ lost because of this crap and may still be losing because even though he us innocent some companies will dustance themselves even now. This office deserves to pony up as others have mention. The effects of this suit may never totally disappear.
Battle89
- Cary-Grove, the better Trojan team
That's enough for me to not hate it for them
uiba99
I'd rather be at Allerton
Honestly, that would be very difficult and requires multiple different departments, many of which would have NO dog in the fight, in order to work. I was repeatedly told as a state employee that deleting an email did not mean it was gone forever; in fact, it was out there forever on our giant server.
A lot rougher to hide evidence now when so much is electronic and has a longer trail.
uiba99
I'd rather be at Allerton
From a PR standpoint, I wonder if they settle just to keep all that stuff from coming to light. Even if they were to win (and with qualified immunity, the odds are in their favor), the court of public opinion will shred them.
Then again, the corrupt and indifferent rarely use common sense.
Normally a finding of probable cause is fatal in a case like this. I have no confidence in the Douglas County DA but doubt she would have made such stupid mistakes as sending messages of this type but there is another angle here. The Morris angle. This was not available at the preliminary hearing because the DA never disclosed it. Why? They have a duty to disclose potentially exculpatory evidence. Now maybe an alternate suspect who it is alleged committed a remarkably similar offense, at the same location, in close time proximity and also just happened to be there at the time this occurred is just pure coincidence, random chance and not exculpatory. Problem is after his lawyers found out about Morris and sought to introduce that evidence the DA fought like heck to keep it out using that outstanding legal argument it was just a coincidence without showing any proof. The trial judge saw right through that and ruled the evidence was relevant. Now once alaskaillini's fishing starts I suspect it will come out the DA made the decision not to disclose it. One thing about fishing, once you start you might catch the big one
For anyone who is going to follow every filing and sentence written by counsel in a civil suit, please understand that is not an exercise in objective fact on either side. Rules of Professional Conduct require each to represent their client’s interests zealously. For many that sometimes can seem to outweigh (feel free to substitute apropos synonym here) other rules.
IlliniwekKDR
- Colorado Springs, CO
You know Northwestern fans?
63 Split
- Mesa, AZ
If anyone deserves compensation for their loss, it’s TJ. Frankly, I’m surprised he isn’t seeking more than $12 million.
Below are 2 lines from the attached chart of Rookie Salaries for the top 30 First Round 2024 draftees…showing TJ at #27. These salaries are guaranteed for 1st two years…teams choice for following 2 Yrs…, but this is basically assured incomes. I suspect his lawyers have looked at this data to argue what would have happened had TJ never been charged.
There’s no doubt his star was rising quickly before the charge became public…was even talk of his being player of the year …and certainly would have been an All American. Most references seem to put his draft number at somewhere from top 5 to easily top 15…a realist target of around #10 seems plausible especially given the way he finished (even with the charges hanging over his head)
Note the difference in 4 yr income being drafted #10 vs #27….right at $12 million. Not saying this is where they got the asking amount…just that it adds logic to his claim. I hope he gets it. Bottom line…the criminal charges cost him millions!
www.hoopsrumors.com
Below are 2 lines from the attached chart of Rookie Salaries for the top 30 First Round 2024 draftees…showing TJ at #27. These salaries are guaranteed for 1st two years…teams choice for following 2 Yrs…, but this is basically assured incomes. I suspect his lawyers have looked at this data to argue what would have happened had TJ never been charged.
There’s no doubt his star was rising quickly before the charge became public…was even talk of his being player of the year …and certainly would have been an All American. Most references seem to put his draft number at somewhere from top 5 to easily top 15…a realist target of around #10 seems plausible especially given the way he finished (even with the charges hanging over his head)
Note the difference in 4 yr income being drafted #10 vs #27….right at $12 million. Not saying this is where they got the asking amount…just that it adds logic to his claim. I hope he gets it. Bottom line…the criminal charges cost him millions!
| Draft # | 2024/25 | 2025/26 | 2026/27 | 2027/28 | Total |
|---|
| 10 | $5,469,120 | $5,742,480 | $6,015,600 | $7,669,890 | $24,897,090 |
| 27 | $2,546,640 | $2,674,080 | $2,801,640 | $5,054,159 | $13,076,519 |
Rookie Scale Salaries For 2024 NBA First-Round Picks
We break down the salaries the first-round picks from 2024's NBA draft will earn on their first contracts.
www.hoopsrumors.com
I don't think TSJ would be allowed to go after what he would have made as a measure of damages as that is speculative. Not even sure he could present that evidence to the jury to be honest, although he can likely argue that under the circumstances his reputation was very valuable, and the damage should be millions. The jury has a lot of discretion in setting that amount for damages to his reputation generally and for emotional distress. He may be able to argue for loss of NIL, but probably only to the extent he can show that prior engagements were canceled, which are in addition to emotional distress and reputation damages. At least that is what I remember from law school, which was a long time ago.If anyone deserves compensation for their loss, it’s TJ. Frankly, I’m surprised he isn’t seeking more than $12 million.
Below are 2 lines from the attached chart of Rookie Salaries for the top 30 First Round 2024 draftees…showing TJ at #27. These salaries are guaranteed for 1st two years…teams choice for following 2 Yrs…, but this is basically assured incomes. I suspect his lawyers have looked at this data to argue what would have happened had TJ never been charged.
There’s no doubt his star was rising quickly before the charge became public…was even talk of his being player of the year …and certainly would have been an All American. Most references seem to put his draft number at somewhere from top 5 to easily top 15…a realist target of around #10 seems plausible especially given the way he finished (even with the charges hanging over his head)
Note the difference in 4 yr income being drafted #10 vs #27….right at $12 million. Not saying this is where they got the asking amount…just that it adds logic to his claim. I hope he gets it. Bottom line…the criminal charges cost him millions!
Draft # 2024/25 2025/26 2026/27 2027/28 Total
10 $5,469,120 $5,742,480 $6,015,600 $7,669,890 $24,897,090
27 $2,546,640 $2,674,080 $2,801,640 $5,054,159 $13,076,519
Rookie Scale Salaries For 2024 NBA First-Round Picks
We break down the salaries the first-round picks from 2024's NBA draft will earn on their first contracts.
sbillini
- st petersburg, fl
Yea, I’d imagine in an industry as highly regulated is this is, there’s backups everywhere.
I’m in finance as well and everything I do (email, chats, etc) is backed up on a company server regardless of what I do with it on any of my devices. Now they might have personal devices that aren’t directly linked to work (eg text messages on personal phones) but talking work via those means is a strict no-no in an of itself.
You're right, there are multiple copies of backups for most data. I was in data storage sales for decades before retiring this year. You'd be surprised how much data is stored on tape and the cloud and how long it can stay there - for decades or the life of the organization. Most counties don't have the staffing to decide what to delete or the technology to automatically delete based on policies so it just accumulates. The problem is that they also don't have the technology to easily find stuff that's not current. I'm anxious to see what they can find in discovery.
A huge part of any civil lawsuit is speculative. For example, when someone gets severely injured, damages would include loss of income. Obviously, for someone who is 20 years old, that's impossible to figure out.
Loss of reasonably expected income is definitely part of the damages the plaintiff suffers. Then both sides Troy out experts to estimate what those are.
Defamation and malicious prosecution are not my areas of practice, but a business that has no track record cannot recover for loss of expected profits, while a business that has a track record upon which the calculation of lost profits can be based is allowed to do so. I am not sure the court would allow some NBA draft analyst to opine about where TSJ would have been drafted but for the prosecution. This isn't a typical lost income case where the injured party has a job that pays x dollars a year and he missed two years of work. That is not speculative.
I am sure you could find a paid expert that would predict that TSJ would have been National Player of the Year and drafted in the 3rd round had he not been suspended six games, but I am not sure the court could let that it. The damages do have to be reasonably certain - how could any result other than what actually occurred be reasonably certain. If you're defending, you could claim lost income should be reduced by an amount to compensate for the risk that the extra playing time made it likely that he would have been hurt and never played a day in the NBA. Or that the acquittal and how he handled himself increased his draft stock. I seriously doubt that the court is not going to want to engage in that dog and pony show.
Good luck with that argument.
I don't know how evidence exhibits work (are those proof they were accepted by the judge as relevant or can they submit anything as exhibits?), but those pre-draft analysis articles were submitted by Shannon's team to Judge Lawless when he was fighting to return to the team, might be relevant here if the same logic applies for admissibility.
Here's some relevant text from the Lawless decision:
"However, Plaintiff’s participation in sports is vital to the development of his career as well as his current and future economic opportunities considering Plaintiff’s intention to declare for the 2024 NBA Draft. Prior to his suspension, Plaintiff was projected to be a lottery pick in the NBA. (Doc. 11 at 1)."
So she did accept a reporter's article that Shannon was going to go at least in the top 14 as evidence when determining his claim.
This article was included in the exhibits (Shannon goes pick 14) https://bleacherreport.com/articles...-pro-comparisons-and-full-2-round-predictions
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The case feels like an $8 Million case to me personally. When you consider that pain inflicted, the present and future earnings lost, and the fact whenever you google TSJ this story will come up. It has tainted him for a long-time, a situation he had nothing to do with. $8 Million doesn't cover the punitive and may still be too low, but that is my initial feeling without doing all the math and reviewing all the opportunities. The $8 Million also doesn't fully cover the embarrassment, shame, ridicule and overall pain this charge and trial caused TSJ, that unfortunately can't change the past.
can the current case refer to the rationale from the Lawless decision to validate claims of higher earning expectation?
3 point girl
- texas
I thought there was a $500,000 cap on lawsuits against Municipalities in Kansas unless they had a policy in excess of that amount. Has that been changed?
Proving that your earning potential has been negatively impacted is different than proving how much that potential has been impacted.
The admissibility of expert testimony (the expert's opinion) is complex and I'm no expert (pun intended). However, expert opinions generally have to be based upon some scientifically verifiable process, and it must lead to some "reasonably certain" or "reasonably probable" result. In other words, it cannot just be a best guess. So, if some draft expert comes in and says TSJ would have gone 10th but for the prosecution, he has to show empirically how he reached that conclusion. If it is based upon what he was hearing from GMs, then that is just hearsay fact testimony. Instead, TSJ would instead have to get the GM to come in and say that in doing their draft analysis, they would have taken TSJ at number 10 but the fact of the prosecution dropped him off their first round board - is that possible, IDK, but I would not expect that kind of testimony, though it might well be admissible. I just don't think some draft analyst is going to be allowed to give his opinion of where TSJ would be drafted.
Interesting, such a limitation one the waiver of sovereign immunity would cut off any claim above that against Douglas County. Haven't looked into it, but it may not offer much protection to the DA or the detective from being sued personally.
I don't think it's difficult to prove (or at least provide substantial evidence) that draft status is negatively impacted by prosecutions. His draft projection changed significantly after he was accused. Even if it's impossible to know his exact draft position, that wouldn't stop estimating it for damages. I'm not sure who they would want as an expert, but there's a lot of consulting services in the basketball world that provide film, expert opinion, etc..
On the topic of "catching the big one" once TSJ's lawsuit is filed and discovery begins, DA Valdez and her former top Deputy DA Seiden, (who was also her campaign manager in her recent and not surprisingly unsuccessful bid for reelection where she received less than 10% of the vote as the incumbent in her own party's primary!) have an already established and very troubling history of non-compliance with their professional disclosure obligations as admitted to by their own attorney recently in a claim arising out of a vacated wrongful death conviction of a woman wrongfully incarcerated for 5 years!
The DA’s office had previously told the court that it had produced the entire discovery file used by the DA’s office to prosecute Buchhorn, but said in the brief, “Further investigation has recently revealed that is not the case.”
The filing wherein Valdez’s attorney claims new evidence has been found was a request to the court to delay depositions of Valdez and Seiden in the wrongful-conviction case. The lawsuit was filed in 2023 by Carrody Buchhorn, 49, who was convicted in 2018 of second-degree murder in connection with the death of 9-month-old Oliver “Ollie” L. Ortiz on Sept. 29, 2016, at Sunshine Kids Group Daycare Home.
Her conviction was overturned in 2021 on appeal, and District Attorney Suzanne Valdez announced that she intended to retry Buchhorn. However, after Valdez failed to produce an expert who could say how the child died, the court dismissed the case without prejudice in December 2022. Valdez shortly thereafter said she would cease prosecution of Buchhorn — after having actively pursued the case for well over a year — citing a report filed on Jan. 3, 2023, from a forensic pathologist who reviewed the child’s autopsy report and concluded that Ortiz “died from natural disease and pathophysiologic processes unrelated to child abuse.”
After the dismissal and Valdez’s statement to cease prosecution, Buchhorn filed a civil suit against the State of Kansas seeking a certificate of innocence and compensation, almost $400,000, for attorney fees and the more than five years she was incarcerated in some form in connection with the case. The certificate of innocence would effectively expunge the arrest and conviction from her record while the money would only begin to pay back the legal fees and debt Buchhorn’s family has incurred throughout the process. For further information on this appalling abuse of process by DA Valdez, see below:
DA’s office reopens investigation into baby’s 2016 death - as $400,000 incompetence bill comes due. https://www2.ljworld.com/news/public-safety/2024/mar/19/das-office-reopens-investigation-into-babys-2016-death-at-a-eudora-day-care-valdez-declines-to-provide-details-but-move-comes-as-state-faces-wrongful-conviction-lawsuit/
- Status