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BREAKING NEWS: Culpepper guilty of defaming Cottrell

3:45 p.m. TUSCALOOSA | Former recruiting analyst Tom Culpepper was found guilty of defaming former University of Alabama assistant coach Ronnie Cottrell on Friday.

Po Monkey Lounger wrote:Bama eating their own.

NCAA gonna pay??? NOPE

Good luck to Culpepper collecting that judgment. He best be looking for another job somewhere ----- surely Hal Mumme needs an assistant or two.

CECIL HURT: Jury hands Culpepper heap of 'collateral damage’
July 23, 2005

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It’s called collateral damage. At one point, in all the reams and reams of testimony in the Ronnie Cottrell defamation suit, Tom Culpepper apparently used that phrase, saying that “this was war, and in war, there is going to be collateral damage."

Tom Culpepper probably has a deep understanding of the phrase today.

Culpepper was the last defendant standing when the Cottrell case went to the jury on Friday, and if he remained standing after the verdict -- a staggering $30 million in damages awarded to Cottrell -- it couldn’t have been easy.

According to the charge from the judge, those damages were based on some defamatory personal statements made by Culpepper against Cottrell, statements that alleged Cottrell had committed theft, or had abandoned his family. The jurors didn’t have to deliberate very long before making their decision. They felt that Culpepper made those statements, and that those statements damaged Cottrell to the extent that a huge award was necessary.

All the jurors I talked to, and others who I have heard speaking on television or the radio, indicated that they were able to set aside the other, recently departed defendant in the case, the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Culpepper did what he did, the jurors said, and these were the consequences.

Still, one has to wonder if there wasn’t a message here, a message that the jurors would have addressed to Indianapolis if they could have done so.

If Culpepper was found to have damaged one coach to the tune of $30 million, who knows what the jury would have found if the NCAA had still be a defendant, and Ivy Williams had still been a plaintiff? It’s purely speculative on my part, but the award might have had as many as eight zeroes behind the “1" and in front of the decimal point.

Culpepper did what he did, but I can’t help thinking that the damage inflicted upon him on Friday was, in some ways, collateral, the shrapnel left over from a bomb that was would have targeted the NCAA if only there had been a delivery system.

The NCAA may have been “vindicated," in the words of NCAA attorney Jim Jenkins after Judge Steve Wilson dimissed the NCAA from the case, but it doesn’t look that way. Friday’s verdict doesn’t really vindicate the University of Alabama, either. Its case is closed, and its penalties stand. But no one seems to think, after this trial, that the NCAA acted properly in the investigation.

Culpepper’s attorney, John Scott, seemed to sense this. He did his best in his emotional closing argument to distance Culpepper from the NCAA. He called Culpepper “a man without power." He railed against the “harsh penalties" meted out against Alabama. He said bluntly that Culpepper would never have gone to the NCAA in the first place, if he could have seen the future.

But it was all too late. The connection was made.

The fact is, Culpepper was used, too. I’m not going to try and analyze his motives. The jury seemed to think he acted maliciously, although they didn’t actually have to rule on that issue. But even if he acted with the best intentions, he took his story of Logan Young’s wrongdoings to precisely the wrong people: Phil Fulmer (whose animosity and exploitation can at least be easily understood) and the NCAA (whose animosity is harder to understand.) But when he contacted Fulmer and NCAA investigator Rich Johanningmeier, Culpepper, as I said, became a pawn.

Pawns aren’t treated well. Thus, the NCAA didn’t do Tom Culpepper any favors along the way.

They didn’t do him any favor when they used his testimony without his consent to do so. They didn’t do him any favor when they failed to protect his confidentiality, even though they had promised to do so. They didn’t do him any favor when they propped Tom Yeager in front of a microphone to tell every Alabama supporter that they were “looking down the barrel of a gun." They didn’t do him any favors in this trial, when the assertions by a smug Mark Jones that Culpepper’s testimony was “unimportant" was presented to a jury that clearly believed otherwise.

All this could have been avoided if the NCAA had merely obeyed its own bylaws, bylaws which require the association to “assist the institution in its effort to achieve full compliance" (Bylaw 2.8.2) and “only present information (to the Committee on Infractions) that can be attributed to individuals who are willing to be identified." (Bylaw 32.7.5.5) Those two by-laws weren’t just broken. They were trampled. That doesn’t excuse rules violations by Alabama. It does let everyone know just exactly how the investigation was conducted.

Again, Tom Culpepper did what he did, and the jury decided what it decided, to the tune -- make that the blaring crescendo -- of $30 million that his statements had damaged Ronnie Cottrell and destroyed his college coaching career.

But it wasn’t just his statements that cost Culpepper in Tuscaloosa Circuit Court. It was also his choices -- and the collateral damage that they ultimately caused, in every direction.

Culpepper found guilty; jury awards Cottrell $30 million

By David Wasson
Executive Sports Editor
July 23, 2005

TUSCALOOSA | The verdict was swift and loud: Guilty.

The dollar amount attached was almost as deafening: $30 million.

Former University of Alabama football recruiting coordinator Ronnie Cottrell won a staggering jury verdict over former recruiting analyst Tom Culpepper on Friday afternoon, the largest monetary claim ever in a jury trial in Tuscaloosa County.

“I think they saw through it. They saw we were the underdogs, and they sent a message," lead Cottrell attorney Tommy Gallion told The Tuscaloosa News.

“Not just to Culpepper, but to the NCAA as well.

“This validates all we have been saying for 2½ years, and I can’t tell you how happy and grateful I am to the jury for doing the right thing. This has been one of the most emotional trials I have been a part of in my 36 years in law."

The 12-person Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court jury deliberated for 63 minutes before reaching its unanimous verdict in the defamation lawsuit. Cottrell won $6 million in compensatory damages and $24 million in punitive damages.

“I am just thankful, and I said this from the beginning, that all I wanted was a jury trial. And yes, I do feel like I got some of my reputation back," an emotional Cottrell said after the nine-day trial.

“We still feel like there is more work to do, though. I am just stunned. It is amazing."

Cottrell attorney Delaine Mountain said, “I think this makes a tremendously loud statement for Ronnie, to vindicate him and to show what wrongs were thrust on him for the last several years,"

“Ronnie Cottrell is not guilty. Ronnie Cottrell has not done anything. Ronnie Cottrell has been wrongfully treated. … As we have said all along, this is not about money. It is about justice. And we are not through with the NCAA, either."

A stoic Culpepper -- who was a secret witness in the NCAA’s investigation against the Crimson Tide football program -- repeatedly declined to comment as he quickly left the courthouse. His attorneys also declined to comment, other than to say they plan to appeal.

“You have 12 people who decided it. It was a consensus," juror Randy Tunnell said. “Actually, that number was higher in some jurors’ eyes. They thought it should have been more.

“We think it was fair. We decided on the punitive damages because we didn’t think [the compensatory damages] could repair the damage that has been done to [Cottrell’s] reputation."

After seeing his case whittled down by Judge Steven Wilson during the past nine days, Cottrell’s remaining suit claimed Culpepper defamed him by saying he stole money from the Shaun Alexander Foundation, that he stole videotapes from the University of Alabama after his dismissal, and that he abandoned his first wife and family in Tallahassee.

“The entire jury was on the same page," jury foreman Joseph Santina said. “We looked at all the evidence from both sides to give him a fair hearing.

“A lot of us felt like Ronnie Cottrell could not defend himself. There was a lot of information for both sides contradicting each other. We had multiple votes on a variety of topics, because we wanted to give both sides a look at everything."

Cottrell -- who is currently the head coach at Carroll High School in Ozark -- and former Tide coach Ivy Williams -- now an assistant coach at Division I-AA Savannah State -- filed suit almost two years ago against Culpepper and the NCAA, claiming they were unable to find comparable employment following the NCAA’s investigation and sanctions against Alabama.

Before the trial, Cottrell’s attorneys filed a motion to compel the defendants to produce a document they believed would show that the NCAA agreed to pay Culpepper’s legal fees. NCAA president Myles Brand changed a line in his deposition on the matter on April 22, saying that the NCAA did have an agreement with Culpepper to pay his legal fees.

It is unclear if such an agreement, if in effect, would also indemnify the NCAA to Culpepper for the $30 million verdict.

“We are going to file more motions for agreements that we have been trying to get that might have a bearing on paying this verdict," Mountain said.

Thursday, Wilson threw out both Williams as a defendant as well as all claims against the NCAA, leaving only Cottrell’s suit against Culpepper.

“Yesterday when we realized what the judge had ruled and what the case was about, we had to put the NCAA aside," Tunnell said. “We couldn’t think about the NCAA any more. But we thought the facts were there [to support this verdict.]"

“I was disappointed that the NCAA was dismissed," Santina said. “Even afterward, though, all the jury was on the same page. The evidence was overwhelming to Cottrell."

Wilson also reversed a previous ruling Thursday in a move that made it easier for Cottrell to prove his claims against Culpepper. Wilson ruled that Cottrell should be considered a private figure by the jury, rather than a limited-access public figure, as he had previously ruled.

During closing arguments, which took up much of the morning, lead Cottrell attorney Tommy Gallion gave a 37-minute closing argument, followed by defense attorney John Scott for 63 minutes.

“How would you feel if your life was ruined, [and] you couldn’t defend yourself, and you didn’t know who your accuser was?" Gallion said. “This man’s dream is gone. His ambition, everything. He is now destroyed forever in college football."

“Is there an agenda here to continue the destruction of Tom Culpepper? Is he being punished for talking to the NCAA? Is it coincidental that they all seem like the same song?" Scott said. “Is it a witch hunt, to make Tom Culpepper the whipping boy for all the bad that happened in this NCAA matter."

Mountain then gave the final argument for 23 minutes, asking the jury for $10 million for compensatory damages and three to five times that amount for punitive damages, before the court was adjourned for lunch.

“The world is going to hear what you say; they will hear your verdict," Mountain said. “It will do one of two things for Ronnie Cottrell. It will either send him out of this courtroom still smeared, still tarnished and people still believing he is guilty. Or you will be able to remove that cloud."

its all a big conspiracy

motive for going after Young and Cottrell was out of his intense loyalty to Alabama and belief that Young and Cottrell were staining the reputation of Alabama

the decision by the Judge to treat Cottrell as a private figure as opposed to a public figure is a ruling of law that will most likely be reviewed on appeal

so, 12 Alabama jurors(and likely Tide football fans) were disgusted with the whole mess and like a runaway train took it out on Culpepper with an absurdly large jury verdict obviously based upon bias and passion ----such does not vindicate anyone, certainly not Alabama

IS Alabama going to hire Cottrell and Williams back?? --since they are such great citizens and role models for college athletics and recruiting?? IF they have been truly "vindicated", then why not?

webbmaster wrote:Then again, if you had a client who just won 30 million dollars, I doubt you'd be on an internet message board....

mudsucker wrote:

webbmaster wrote:Then again, if you had a client who just won 30 million dollars, I doubt you'd be on an internet message board....

What an booty you are!