Poor Lance Armstrong. How a decade can change everything.
At the height of his fame, he was accused by Britain’s The Sunday Times of taking performance-enhancing drugs. The usual libel lawsuit was commenced by Armstrong and in 2006 the paper paid him about a half million dollars to settle. The anonymous sources clearly did not want to come forward to testify for the paper. Seeing the writing on the wall, the paper no doubt realized that it did not have enough evidence to come out on the right side of a trial. So it settled. Good move.
Jump forward 7 years. Armstrong confesses to the doping allegations and loses his Tour de France titles after his teammates confirm he led their doping program. Everything in his empire collapsed like a house of cards.
Justifiably, the paper sued not only to get back its settlement payment but also sued for an additional million in damages. According to the National Post (http://sports.nationalpost.com/2013/08/25/lance-armstrong-settles-1-63m-case-after-newspaper-sues-to-reclaim-libel/), that lawsuit has now settled. The terms of settlement were agreed to be confidential. Darn.
I’m hazarding a guess that Lance had to do more than just say sorry.
Paul H. Voorn
Andriessen & Associates