FEDS SEEK JUDGEMENT IN LANCE ARMSTRONG CASE

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Feds seek judgment in Lance Armstrong case

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports Feds seek verdict in Lance Armstrong case The federal government has put a price on its fight against Lance Armstrong -- exactly $32,267,279.85.

That’s how much it says his cycling team was paid by the U.S. Postal Service based on 41 claims for payment between June 10, 2000 and October 2004, according to court documents filed Wednesday. And now it wants a federal judge to rule on that issue as part of its effort to get it back in triple – nearly $100 million.

“Because the factual record is undisputed, the United States respectfully requests that this Court enter an order granting partial summary judgment in its favor,” the government stated in its filing Wednesday.

It’s the latest and most critical stage yet in the government’s 3-year-old civil fraud lawsuit against Armstrong and two other co-defendants -- Johan Bruyneel, Armstrong’s former cycling team director, Tailwind Sports, the cycling team’s owner.

The government filed for partial summary judgment on that amount Wednesday, hoping it will bolster its effort to recover damages on behalf of the USPS, which paid that amount to sponsor Armstrong’s cycling team.

Armstrong also on Wednesday requested summary judgment against the government, a motion that asks the judge to rule on key parts of the case without taking them to a jury trial.

One of those issues is the amount at stake. In its suit, the government says that Armstrong’s cycling team violated its sponsorship contract by doping and that it submitted false claims for payment to the USPS while in violation of that contract.

“It’s a shrewd move (by the government),” said government contracts expert Tony Anikeeff of the firm Williams Mullen.  “They’re going for a very minor point that will have a dramatic effect on the case.  They want to establish the simple fact that claims were submitted and set the base dollar amount in the case.”

Armstrong's request for summary judgment was more sweeping. It asks the court to throw out the whole case against him and notes the sponsorship contracts were between Tailwind and the USPS and not directly with him. 

" Armstrong was never a party to those agreements; he did not read or sign them," his attorneys stated in a 59-page argument filed Wednesday. "He never submitted a claim for payment under either sponsorship agreement." 

Summary judgment decisions could come later this year by U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper. Otherwise the suit proceeds to trial, prolonging a legal slugfest that revved up in 2013, when the government joined a case originally filed in 2010 by Armstrong’s former teammate, Floyd Landis.

Under the False Claims Act, damages could be tripled to nearly $100 million, with Armstrong possibly on the hook for all of it and Landis in line to get a cut of it as the whistleblower who brought the case.

The government's official request Wednesday boiled down to this:

“The United States therefore respectfully requests that the Court enter an order granting partial summary judgment in favor of the United States against Defendants Tailwind, Armstrong,and Bruyneel that… Tailwind and its predecessor DFP Cycling LLC presented forty-one claims for payment to the United States between June 10, 2000 and October 31, 2004 under the 1995 and 2000 Sponsorship Agreements, for which the USPS paid Tailwind and its predecessor DFP Cycling LLC a total of $32,267,279.85.”

Tailwind dissolved in 2007. Bruyneel is from Belgium and recently lived in London. They have not responded to the suit, recently leading a court clerk to declare them to be in default. That leaves Armstrong as the lone active defendant in the government’s case, which his attorneys describe as wrongheaded and essentially worthless. 

They argue the USPS suffered no actual damages from the doping because it got more than its money’s worth from the sponsorship. Back then, Armstrong was at the height of his fame as a cancer survivor and a cycling champion who generated worldwide publicity for the USPS by wearing its logo to victory in the Tour de France.

The issue of damages could make or break the case and is hotly disputed, with both sides hiring expert witnesses to testify about whether the USPS suffered damages. In a separate ruling Wednesday, Cooper ordered Armstrong to make his expert available for four more hours of deposition testimony.

In the motion for summary judgment, Anikeeff said the government took a key step Wednesday to put a number on its claims. He noted the 41 claims could come with penalties of $5,500 to $11,000 each, in addition to the paid amount of $32 million.

“The impact of partial summary judgment on this point will be significant,” said Anikeeff, who is not involved in the case. “The United States will still need to prove the claims were false and that defendants knew they were false, but it will have raised the stakes substantially.  The base amount at stake in the case will be set at a high level for defendants as a matter of law.”

Armstrong was stripped of all seven of his victories in the Tour de France in 2012. After more than a decade of lying about doping, he finally confessed in January 2013. He has reached undisclosed settlements with three other plaintiffs who sued him for fraud, including two companies that insured his bonuses for winning the Tour

SOURCES: USA TODAY SPORTS