Well I hope
@brandon_cox reads the request for summary judgement. IANAL, but it seems pretty weak to me. It does not contain 12,000 pieces of evidence. It basically is an attempt at summary judgement to dismiss the lawsuit because Pastner is a public figure and the requirements for suing someone for defamation of a public figure are tougher than a non-public person. The document leaves out the blackmail threats before the defamation attempts started. It then goes into a long description of the Crawford recruiting allegation, which I do not recall as being part of the defamation that occurred before the lawsuit was filed. Maybe it is part of what Bell said before the lawsuit, however part of the filing to prove that Pastner was recruiting Crawford against NCAA rules is the following message to Bell:
Regarding Markel, you are not allowed to help him move go to az etc... the rules won’t allow it. Trust me. When his eligibility is all up you can help him however you want. But that is a year away. Plus, for Markel he needs to focus on playing for Memphis and doing his job academically. When the season is finished if he wants to transfer he needs to go see coach Smith personally and professionally and deal with coach Smith. If he and coach smith both think it is best for him to transfer then they can make that decision then. Anything else in the short term is wasted energy
It seems to me that Pastner was telling Bell that he had to wait until the season finished and Crawford discussed transferring with the coach. The document claims that since Pastner didn't specifically tell Bell not to discuss a transfer with Crawford that it was an explicit approval of Bell recruiting him.
In my non-legally-educated mind, it seems that the summary judgement motion will fail because even if the Crawford accusations were true:
- Bell threatened blackmail to "ruin" Pastner before releasing additional information which isn't true
- Bell contacted tens if not hundreds of news organizations attempting to spread the information as far as he could -- exactly with the intent to harm Pastner
I get that lawyers routinely file such motions. I don't normally read such things so this might be standard. however, if the "evidence" that is included leads me to the opposite conclusion to what the lawyer is arguing, I don't see how it can be effective.
