Ex-Los Angeles Clippers owner adds wife to suit against NBA
LOS ANGELES (AP) Former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling says he could have gotten more than the record $2 billion paid for the team last year but the circumstances of the sale ''markedly reduced'' the price.
The comment was contained in an amended complaint that Sterling's lawyers filed last week in his lawsuit against the NBA over the sale, the Los Angeles Times reported (http://lat.ms/18ct3bE). The suit seeks at least $600 million in damages.
The complaint also added three new defendants to the suit: Sterling's wife, Rochelle, and two doctors who examined Sterling last year and determined that he had symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, leading his wife to remove him from a family trust that owned the Clippers at the time.
Rochelle Sterling last year arranged for former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to buy the Clippers. Donald Sterling has previously contended that he could get more for the team by also selling TV rights and through his lawsuit against the league, which alleges antitrust violations and unfair business practices.
Stephen Smith, one of Rochelle Sterling's attorneys, called the filing ''desperate and frivolous.''
Donald Sterling bought the team for $13.5 million and moved the franchise to Los Angeles in 1984.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver banned him from the league for life last year and fined him $2.5 million over recorded racist remarks that he made to a girlfriend.
Sterling's amended complaint contends that his wife improperly conspired with Silver and the NBA to sell the team.
''Additionally, the NBA and Silver isolated Rochelle from her husband and scared her into undertaking certain conduct hereinafter alleged, including the signing of papers ... that she did not understand,'' the 32-page complaint said. ''All of this conduct constituted elder abuse.''
The complaint also contends that Rochelle Sterling used fraud to get the doctors to examine her husband.
The suit said Donald Sterling ''suffered extreme mental distress ... including worry, anxiety, anger, embarrassment, sleeplessness and fatigue.''
Sterling himself is the subject of an NBA countersuit that contends his wife had indemnified the league against any legal action by her husband.
Meanwhile, nearly seven months after the Clippers sale, $1 billion of the proceeds remain in an escrow account under NBA control, Bobby Samini, Donald Sterling's attorney, told the Times.
Sterling also is appealing a July ruling in Los Angeles County Superior Court that allowed the sale to proceed.
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Information from: Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com/
