Judge to Nike: Release Armstrong talks

Attorneys for Lance Armstrong, Nike and the federal government marched into a federal courtroom Tuesday to debate whether the world’s biggest sportswear company should be dragged deeper into Armstrong’s ongoing legal mess.

After hearing more than an hour of arguments about it, U. S. District Judge Marco Hernandez essentially decided yes. He ordered Nike to cough up certain communications between Nike and Armstrong requested by the government. But he is reserving judgment on financial information requested by Armstrong, pending further arguments by the former cyclist’s attorneys.

The decision marks the latest turn in the government’s $ 100 million civil fraud suit against Armstrong — this time a threeway fight between American heavyweights.

Armstrong and the U. S. government had issued subpoenas for information from Nike as a star witness in the case. But Nike fought back, telling the judge it didn’t “have a dog in that fight” and is not relevant to the issues being argued.

In the end, the company didn’t win that argument but still hopes to be able to keep trade secrets and other confidential financial data out of Armstrong’s hands as the battle for pretrial evidence in this case continues to escalate.

The government is suing Arm- strong on behalf of the U. S. Postal Service, which paid more than $ 30 million to sponsor his cycling team from 1998 to 2004. The government argues that Armstrong breached the team’s sponsorship contract by doping and concealed it with false statements.

In his defense, Armstrong’s attorneys say the case is wrongheaded because the government was not damaged by his doping and instead profited greatly from his success with the USPS team. They also have argued that the USPS should have known about his doping long ago but didn’t file this case until it was too late under the statute of limitations.

“( Armstrong) is saying the U. S. Postal Service should have known that he was doping because of allegations, because of publicly available information that is available to all of Armstrong’s sponsors,” U. S. Justice Department attorney Greg Mason told the judge. “The United States is entitled to develop facts surrounding what other sponsors knew. If sponsors X, Y and Z were all in the dark, that undermines Armstrong’s argument that the Postal Service should have known.”

Nike sponsored Armstrong before firing him in 2012, citing evidence that he had engaged in doping and misled the company for more than a decade. The government wants information from Nike about what the company might have discussed with Armstrong about doping. Hernandez granted that request.

In Armstrong’s case, he wants financial information from Nike that would show how it valued the benefits it received from sponsoring Armstrong and his team, bolstering his argument that the USPS and other sponsors got their money’s worth from the sponsorships, no matter if he doped. R. James Slaughter, an attorney for Armstrong, argued that USPS was “similarly situated” to Nike in terms of such benefits.

Bob Weaver, an attorney for Nike, disagreed. He said this information is not relevant to the case because comparing Nike’s business to the USPS is like comparing “apples to a kumquat.”

“I don’t know that a viewer watching Lance Armstrong cycle through the Alps would decide that they wanted now to go start using express mail from the Postal Service,” Weaver told the judge. “But if they decided they would want a jersey he was wearing, that could be because they like Lance Armstrong, because they don’t like Lance Armstrong but like the swoosh ( Nike’s logo), because they see Nike as sponsoring outstanding athletes across the board, and they want to be connected to that.”

Armstrong AP