Lowenstein Sandler Among Firms Hired for Mavs Probe of Ex-Big Law Associate
The NBA's Dallas Mavericks have hired two lawyers to conduct an internal investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct involving the team's longtime former president and CEO, who began his career at Morrison & Foerster.
February 23, 2018 at 03:11 PM
5 minute read
Be it academia, business, Hollywood or public service, the so-called #MeToo movement continues to move into new realms and generate work for dozens of Am Law 200 lawyers.
Professional sports could be next, as the National Basketball Association's Dallas Mavericks announced this week the retention of former New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram and longtime New York City prosecutor Evan Krutoy to conduct an internal investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct involving the team's longtime former president and CEO Terdema Ussery II and another former employee following the publication of a Sports Illustrated story examining a corrosive workplace culture.
The Mavericks, owned since 2000 by billionaire investor Mark Cuban, have fired their vice president of human resources Buddy Pittman and Mavs.com beat writer Earl Sneed after both were mentioned in SI's report as helping perpetuate an environment where several anonymous female former team employees said they felt unsafe. The Mavericks declined to discuss Ussery, who left the franchise in mid-2015 to become president of global sports categories at Under Armour Inc. Ussery would spend only a few months at Under Armour, leaving the sporting apparel company after an incident in an elevator with a female subordinate, according to reporting by SI.
Ussery, who began his career at Morrison & Foerster, where he worked as an associate from 1987 to 1990, did not return a request for comment left for him at 1 Blakley Consulting, a Dallas-based consulting firm he started after his short stint at Under Armour. Ussery denied to SI all of the allegations levied against him by former co-workers, which included claims of inappropriate touching and sexually suggestive comments. In an interview with ESPN.com, Cuban said he was unaware of the allegations against Ussery.
A Morrison & Foerster spokesman declined to reveal whether the firm had ever received similar complaints about Ussery, stating that as a general policy it is “unable to publicly discuss any former or current employee's record at the firm.”
After leaving Morrison & Foerster in 1990, Ussery went on to serve as deputy commissioner and general counsel of the Continental Basketball Association, a former feeder league to the NBA. After becoming one of the highest-ranking African-American executives in the NBA, Ussery was considered a potential replacement for former commissioner and ex-Proskauer Rose partner David Stern, who was eventually succeeded by former Cravath, Swaine & Moore associate Adam Silver—son of former Proskauer chair Edward Silver—in 2014.
Ussery also lost out to former Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom partner Michele Roberts when she was selected to become the new executive director of the National Basketball Players Association that same year. On Thursday, the NBA said it would establish a confidential hotline for league and team employees to report workplace misconduct.
Neither Milgram, who joined Lowenstein Sandler last year as special counsel, nor Krutoy, who serves as senior counsel at New York's Nesenoff & Miltenberg and runs his own solo practice called Krutoy Law, returned requests for comment about their work on behalf of the Mavericks.
Before going into private practice last year, Krutoy spent more than 22 years in the New York County District Attorney's Office, where he once served as the acting deputy bureau chief of the office's Sex Crimes Unit. Milgram, who is also a senior fellow at the New York University School of Law, will reportedly serve as the lead investigator for the Mavericks. (Milgram has been busy in recent months making appearances on cable network MSNBC to discuss another investigation—the Russia probe being conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller III.)
Robert Hart, general counsel to the Mavericks and the Mark Cuban Cos., did not return a phone call inquiring as to how the team came to choose Milgram and Krutoy for its investigation. The Mavericks are not the only pro sports franchise to retain outside counsel to cope with alleged sexual indiscretions by key personnel.
In January, the National Football League hired Debevoise & Plimpton senior chair Mary Jo White to lead an independent investigation into Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson after the team said it looking into allegations of workplace misconduct and four settlements with former employees that came into contact with Richardson. Debevoise took over a probe initially announced by the Panthers in mid-December led by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Erskine Bowles, a former White House chief of staff and minority owner in the team.
Richardson said earlier this year that he would sell the Panthers, which he bought as an NFL expansion team in 1995. Proskauer chairman Joseph Leccese, a noted legal industry sports dealmaker, and Moore & Van Allen corporate tax head William Moore have been hired by the Panthers to advise on a potential sale. Both lawyers are working with Stephen Greenberg, a managing director at boutique investment bank Allen & Co. who also once served as managing partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, where he worked from 1977 until 1989.
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