EXCERPTS FROM N.Y. DAILY NEWS STORY
New York, NY– The $12 million defamation suit Shane Mosley filed against BALCO founder Victor Conte was quietly dismissed last week, ending a contentious 2-1/2 year battle that played out in newspaper and Internet accounts, on courthouse steps and even on YouTube.
The case was “voluntarily dismissed with prejudice and without costs, disbursements or attorney’s fees to any party against another,” according to a document filed on Friday in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. No further terms were made public. A case dismissed with prejudice cannot be re-filed.
Golden Gate University law professor Peter Keane, who has followed the case since it was filed in 2008, said he doesn’t know whether money changed hands, but said it “wouldn’t make sense” for Conte to have paid Mosley to settle.
“It was filed as a posturing move more than anything else,” Keane said. “It was more a stunt than anything else. The fact that it was dumped shows that it had no merit.”
“I’m glad that the Shane Mosley case is finally over, so I can move on with my life,” Conte said Tuesday.
Conte also fended off a $25 million defamation suit filed by sprinter Marion Jones in 2004, costing him hundreds of thousands of dollars in defense fees before Jones admitted using BALCO’s products and went to prison.
“My opinion is that it is pathetic when athletes like Marion Jones continue to go on television and say that she ‘unknowingly’ used drugs,” Conte said.
In the course of the litigation, Mosley’s grand jury testimony was eventually unsealed, revealing doping calendars Conte drew up for him that reflected his meticulous drug regimen in the lead-up to his fight against Oscar De La Hoya in October of 2003. According to grand jury testimony and Conte’s sworn affidavit, Mosley and his trainer flew to the Bay Area in the summer of 2003, collected $1,850 worth of drugs (including “the clear” – the then-undetectable designer steroid THG – and “the cream” – a masking substance), and took a tutorial from Conte on how to inject EPO and apply the steroids.
“Mosley admits under oath he took EPO,” Conte said of the deposition in the defamation case. “He admits I explained how dangerous it was. He admits it would help for performance-enhancing purposes. And he admits that he took it before anyone could have checked with the boxing commission. Shane Mosley knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs.”
NY Daily News
November 16, 2010