Former coach sued for breach of contract
School trying to recover $87,500 from ex-women’s assistant Gandy
is suing a former assistant coach on the women’s basketball team to get $87,500 the school says it is owed when Winston Gandy left for a job at Duke.
Gandy came to Rice in 2017 and was part of coach Tina Langley’s staff for Owls teams that went 72-22 and made an NCAA Tournament appearance in 2019.
The coach resigned on July 21, 2020, to take a job at Duke as an assistant. After Gandy left, Rice hired two assistants — Nolan Wilson and Steven Asher. This year’s team is in the semifinals of the Women’s National Invitation Tournament and plays Delaware on Friday.
The litigation filed by Rice claims Gandy’s move led to a breach of contract for failure to pay Rice 50 percent of his annual base salary within 30 days as liquidated damages. The suit points to Section 4.6 of the assistant coach agreement in effect from April 1, 2020, to March 31, 2021, where Gandy agreed to a provision “expressly addressing consequences in the event that Gandy resigned before the contract’s one-year term expired.”
The section states that if Gandy was to resign or terminate his employment “to coach for another entity” or “then commences coaching for another entity prior to the scheduled expiration of the term of this agreement,” then he was to pay within 30 days a lump sum payment equal to 50 percent of his annual base salary. Since his salary was $175,000, Gandy was to pay Rice $87,500 within 30 days of his resignation.
“The court basically looks at this and usually says, ‘Is this your signature on this contract? Was this added later, or was this part of the contract you signed? And if so, why are you now telling us we shouldn’t enforce what you agreed to?’” said William Robers, attorney and chair of sports practice for the law firm Sparks Willson in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Robers, who has experience representing sports organizations and coaches in contract negotiations, said he wouldn’t have expected the situation to go as far as a lawsuit. However, without having the full details of Gandy’s contract (it was not made available upon request, Rice declined to comment on ongoing litigation and Gandy could not be reach at the time of publication), Robers said there are some avenues Gandy could try to take.
As of the date of filing, Gandy had not paid any portion of the amount promised. In Robers’ opinion, one of the main arguments could come from claiming it is an unenforceable penalty. Liquidated damages cannot legally penalize a side by seeking money disproportionate to the reasonably estimated damages.
Robers said agreements like Gandy’s would have a “ratcheting-down system,” where the longer one side goes through the agreement, the less they would have to pay upon breaking it. However, the agreement between Rice and Gandy was a flat amount.
Even if Gandy had broken the agreement the day before it ended, Rice could still technically seek the damages agreed upon. Robers said Gandy would have a good argument had the resignation taken place just before the end of the agreement but because the resignation happened in July, that claim would likely not hold up.
Still, Robers is somewhat surprised to see Rice and Gandy involved in a lawRice suit. He said he might expect the acquiring institution to pay the buyout, though not doing so could mean Duke sees a defense for Gandy.
Robers is also surprised Rice would file the suit. Though he said it can hurt smaller schools when bigger schools attempt to hire its coaches, going to the lengths Rice has could shed a negative light when it looks to hire coaches in the future.
“Anytime you do any of this, it really hurts the school,” Robers said. “Any good agents are gonna look and say (to their coaching clients), ‘Hey, these guys already sued their last coach. If that’s all you’ve got, fine, but otherwise, look somewhere else.’”