Trying to figure out what happened in the Avenatti case it's completely bananas and I have questions (thread)
The story is that Avenatti approached Nike threatening a lawsuit over them having violated NCAA rules that college athletes must be treated like slaves, and offered a settlement including him personally getting paid $20 million (or so) to \
run an internal investigation at Nike making sure that they continued to treat college athletes like slaves moving forwards. Clearly he personally really, really cares strongly that college athletes continue to be treated like slaves.
Why he thought Nike would be scared by this I don't know. Even if the allegations are true (which I doubt) most of the general public likes college athletes and are at this point against treating them like slaves. (This wasn't true a generation ago, for reasons I can't fathom)
Which leads to my first question: Who even would have standing in this threatened lawsuit? NCAA policies aren't laws. In fact the supreme court appears about to find them illegal en masse. You can't sue a third party for violating another party's internal policies.
The news articles don't explain this in the slightest. Maybe if the NCAA itself were to sue Nike for violating a contract that would be one thing, but it doesn't sound like that. Maybe an athlete who didn't get paid could sue on the grounds of... I dunno, something?
Thankfully in addition to his actions being completely asshole they were also extortion and against the law. He's now sentenced to over two years which is... not nearly as much as this sort of thing would normally go for, it turns out
You see, he had a co-conspirator in this scheme, and the sentencing judge was a bit skeeved by what is also my second question: Why wasn't the co-conspirator even charged? It would be one thing if Avenatti were the head honcho and he testified against \
in exchange for not getting prosecuted, but no it appears that such a deal didn't happen and the judge said the other guy was an equal co-conspirator, or something like that. So Avenatti got off light
Now I'm not generally one for conspiracy theories but this sounds like a bunch of bullshit. Avenatti's whining about how he only got prosecuted because he pissed off the wrong person may have a grain of truth to it.
That is to say, as a big scary lawyer he may have had a get out of jail free card which he may have been using cavalierly for years and it's so unfair that it only got revoked now when he isn't doing anything worse than he did in the past
And his co-conspirator may still be a member in good standing of some get out of jail free club for big scary lawyers. Life is so unfair.
My third question is: Why did anybody ever suggest this guy would be a good candidate for president? Is being a celebrity asshole lawyer a qualification for that job?
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