Company Sues to Recoup Money From Armstrong
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Version 0 of 1. An insurance company that paid Lance Armstrong millions of dollars in bonuses for winning the Tour de France sued him Thursday in a Dallas court, seeking its money back because Armstrong was stripped of his Tour titles and admitted using performance-enhancing drugs for all seven of his Tour victories. The company, SCA Promotions, based in Dallas, claimed that Armstrong; his agent, Bill Stapleton; and Tailwind Sports, Armstrong’s former management company, must repay at least $12 million because Armstrong was no longer an official Tour winner. The lawsuit also asserted that Armstrong had committed fraud against SCA when he said under oath that he had never used performance-enhancing drugs. “By now, everyone knows that Lance Armstrong perpetuated what may well be the most outrageous, coldhearted and elaborate lie in the history of sports,” the lawsuit said, adding that Armstrong was “stunningly ruthless” when it came to maintaining his lies. SCA Promotions paid Armstrong for winning the 2002 and 2003 Tour de France titles but withheld a bonus due to him in 2004 because of doping allegations against Armstrong in the book “L.A. Confidentiel: Les Secrets de Lance Armstrong,” which was published in France. Armstrong fought the company for that money. In sworn testimony in an arbitration proceeding in 2005, Armstrong vehemently said he never doped, saying again and again that he was clean. “How many times do I have to say it?” he said. In the end, his claims of innocence and SCA’s insistence that he was a cheater did not matter. He was awarded $7.5 million in a settlement because he was still the official winner of the 2004 Tour. Tim Herman, one of Armstrong’s lawyers, who on Thursday did not return an e-mail for comment, has said that settlement was final, pointing out that the settlement agreement specifically said so. The agreement, dated February 2006, said “no party may challenge, appeal or attempt to set aside” the arbitration award. But in its lawsuit, SCA claimed otherwise, saying that Herman admitted to arbitrators in 2005 that Armstrong would repay the money if he were ever stripped of his Tour titles. “We won’t dispute that,” Herman said to arbitrators, according to the lawsuit filed by SCA on Thursday. Jeffrey Tillotson, a lawyer for SCA, said that Armstrong and his representatives were “confident and cocky” back then that Armstrong would never be stripped of his titles. “They never thought this would happen,” he said. “It was like they were saying, ‘If you can find a unicorn and produce him, of course we will give you your money back.’ To them, losing those titles was unimaginable.” |