Lance Armstrong was ordered to pay ten million dollars to SCA Promotions, the company that had been fighting what they paid to the Postal team ever since they had to pay it in the first place.
They say that Armstrong engaged in “an unparalleled pageant of international perjury, fraud and conspiracy.” And that he had “used perjury and other wrongful conduct to secure millions of dollars of benefits” from SCA Promotions, the insurance company that was hired to pay the bonus payments to him for winning the Tour de France.
They also said he pressured and intimidated other witnesses to lie. And that he had “used a false personal and emotional appeal to perpetuate” his version of events.
Armstrong acknowledged during his hearing that he had been untruthful in the past but, according to the same arbitrators, he had expressed no remorse for his wrongful conduct.
“We are very pleased with this result,” said SCA’s president and founder, Bob Hamman. “It is hard to describe how much harm Lance Armstrong’s web of lies caused SCA but this is a good first start towards repairing that damage.”
But more people probably now know the name of this company before all this fiasco.
They claim that Armstrong has refused to comply with the judgment but there is evidence that this is not the case.
For the 2001-2003 Tour wins, SCA paid Armstrong $4.5 million and they owed him another $5 million after his 6th win in 2004. But they began fighting, claiming that he didn’t win clean. Armstrong’s team fought them and won because the original contract said nothing about doping. They had to pay up plus another $2.5 million in legal fees and interest.
When Lance went on the Oprah show and came clean, SCA went after him again.
Armstrong’s lawyer Tim Herman said Lance had already offered to pay $10 million but they refused to accept it. They also questioned the legality of re-opening this dispute which both sides had settled for $7.5 million in 2005.
“This award is unprecedented,” Herman wrote. “No Court or arbitrator has ever reopened a matter which was fully and finally settled voluntarily. In this matter SCA repeatedly affirmed that it never relied upon anything Armstrong said or did in deciding to settle. The proper analysis of governing law is set forth in the opinion of arbitrator Ted Lyon, which is part of the award and which we believe will be adopted when the Courts review the action of the Arbitration Panel.
“Despite the absence of any legal basis for the sanction, Armstrong offered to pay SCA the entire $10mm in order to resolve the matter, but SCA refused.”
The only dissenter from the 3-man panel was Ted Lyon who said “the original case Armstrong exposed SCA Promotions for selling insurance in a state in which it did not have a license, a third-degree felony in Texas, with penalties of $10,000 per day.”There were sound reasons for SCA entering into the agreement to settle, including the Confidentiality Agreement, which kept the finding that SCA had engaged in the unauthorized business of insurance from being disclosed to the Texas Department of Insurance, which could have instituted actions against SCA itself.”
Lyon agreed that the ruling was unprecedented, stating, “No arbitration panel in Texas or our nation has ever stretched back so far in time to issue such a sanction.”
