Saturday, April 28, 2012

Athlete attorney clarifies Samsung lawsuit

Sounds like the US Olympic Committee is about to lose a sponsor? Athletes in this lawsuit are from California where the law protects them. I wonder if other athletes will be excluded due the type of civil laws in their respective states?

God Bless California but here is a thought, why isn't USA Swimming advocating for these athletes since they indirectly fall under their national governing body umbrella? Either their face is red or they supported this sort of exploitation in the first place.

From Business Week:
Richard Foster, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, took issue with Samsung's statement that it "followed USOC procedures in communicating with the athletes" and that "the athletes have had the opportunity to voice their opinions on the program and to control their participation."

Foster said Samsung's procedures "consisted of sending an email to some of the plaintiffs, in which they were told of the Genome Project and advised that they would be a part of the project unless they `opted out.'"

He said several of the athletes returned the opt-out letter saying they didn't want to participate, but were included anyway, while others deleted the email without reading it.

"The project clearly sought to induce sales of Samsung products and sought to build the athletic community around its brand," Foster said.

[Link]
Above Caroline Burckle, one of the plaintiffs

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

jaja.. todos esos nadadores que estaban recibiendo halagos en Facebook de sus fans se merecen el uso torticero que Samsung ha hecho de sus nombres, por gilipollas!

Anonymous said...

Athletes are exploited at all levels.

A family member coached high school sports for decades and became frustrated that so many newer, younger coaches would accept free gifts from sports companies in exchange for mandating the kids buy specific articles of clothing or equipment.

An example would be all 80 members of the football team having to buy $30.00 t-shirts to practice in instead of using old shirts they already had.

I think it's great that these athletes are fighting back. I'm tired of others getting rich off of the athletes.

Glenn said...

Not sure Google Translate helps me too much in Anon's post here. Was he calling you a gilipollas, the athletes a gilipollas, or Samsung a gilipollas. Sorry for my language... just trying to get further clarification on the meaning of the post.

Tony Austin said...

I interpreted it as JaJa calling the athletes "A**H****" for not allowing their popularity to grow by way of Facebook likes.

Tony Austin said...

Glenn, the IOC made about $3.25-billion between 2004-2008.

There are currently 106 members of the IOC - They have 5-programs that generate income from rights to broadcast and ticketing. The organization keeps 8% of that $3.25-billion or $260-million.

The IOC provided approximately $318.5 million to our Olympic committee; (USOC) for the 2001–2004 events. DOn't forget the NGBs make money too collecting dues, donations, etc., etc.

Now, how many athletes did we send and how much did they make.

Some day some athlete on the pool deck or at a gymnastics training center or the ice dancers in some cold ice skating rink are going to ask, why am spending 6-hours a day doing this when I can spend 6-hours a day learning how to become hedge fund manager, a politician, a doctor, an painter, a writer?

Or...they can unionize but it will take names like Apollo Ono, Lindsay Vonn, John Isner, and swimmers like Natalie Coughlin, Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte.

No chance in hell The last two would do anything of the sort in my opinion.

I got a bad taste in my mouth that Jason Lezak didn't get a thank you gift nor the others who swam that race.

Anonymous said...

Mark Cuban's blog has a pretty good article bashing the IOC and feels the Olympic athletes should share in the billion dollar business.

Tony Austin said...

It's true... Tara Kirk actually hired a lawyer named Blake Lawit of Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin to insert Soni's objections to having Tara Kirk placed on the 2008 Olympic team.

In fact this guy was so effective in doing so that the arbitrator declared Soni an "interested party" along with USA Swimming.

I am 373-words into a post about this. It blows me away what USA Swimming can get away with.

I am going to say nice things about Mark Schubert too.

Anonymous said...

Tony - you made a typo - don't mean to correct you but:

Soni and not Tara hired Blake Lawit of Howard, Rice, etc.

Tony Austin said...

eek, please correct me when you find something. Thank you so much. I will gt on it now.