The Isiah Thomas civil trial

[By-Tor]

[Chilltown]

I met Isiah Thomas in Toronto once (that's really my only connection to him lol) when he was back with them, so long ass time ago and I was just a kid. I remember one of his assistants telling him of a big problem (I assume with the Raptors), and he was all chill and calm.

He must be a serial killer.

[tuq]

[ QUOTE ]
By the way, tucks, word is that she's going to testify tomorrow that Isiah called Steve Nash a "honky".

[/ QUOTE ]
WTF with that lying bitch, tell her to leave MVSteve out of this.

EDIT: oh wait she's saying Isiah is dogging Steve. My bad. Sexually harassed chick for mod!

[Boris]

This lawsuit is BS.

[DesertCat]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
She made $300,000 a year. If she worked for 20 years for the Garden, that's $6 million, without considering raises.

[/ QUOTE ]

This assumes she can't get any job in the future, i.e. Isiah didn't rob her of the ability to work.

[/ QUOTE ]

Take a wild guess as to how likely someone that sued someone for sexual harassment - no matter how well deserved - in a basketball environment is to find a job in sports again.

[/ QUOTE ]

My point was that $10M effectively doubles her income for the rest of her life, if she gets a job working at McDonalds or someplace even better.

And if she didn't sue, and was qualified, she could have left and got a similar job. I wonder how good an employee she really was though. If she is a great employee, she hasn't closed the door to similar jobs, just made future employers a little more wary, but she can overcome that in interviews.

[DesertCat]

[ QUOTE ]
I listened to Boomer and Carton on WFAN 660 am NY radio this morning on the way in to work.

She feels that MSG fired her unjustly because she complained about sexual harrasment from Isiah Thomas. Basically unjustified firing.

She received excellent work reviews from manangement in the 2+ years prior to her termination.


[/ QUOTE ]

You are taking plaintiff's assertions at face value. She might have had nothing but excellent work reviews, or she might have had some excellent work reviews mixed with poor reviews. She may have had mediocre reviews that plaintiff counsel is spinning as "excellent".

The defense claims that her recent work performance was poor, that she missed her budgets, and tried to subvert the internal investigation of her allegations (the most reasonable interpretation was that she tried to influence witnesses to back her story). Why don't you take the defenses word for it?

[ QUOTE ]

She will win this one going away.

If anyone had any doubt what a creepy scumbag Isiah Thomas acted like before, they will know now.

According to her testimony he basically said (fff-censored) the white man, and created a hostile work environment.

[/ QUOTE ]

Saying F the white man isn't sexual harrassment. Since she was neither white nor a man, it isn't even creating a hostile work environment for her.

The winner of this suit will be the party that is most believable. We don't have enough information yet on who that is. Of course the Dolans and Isiah are scummy idiots, but I think we have to leave that aside in order to give them a fair trial. After all the judge isn't going to let Isiah's trade record, or the Dolans sports management history be entered as evidence.

[DesertCat]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Let me understand this part. A guy you know who lives near the plaintiff says her testimony is truthful. Is this silliest assertion ever. How well does anyone know their neighbors? How well do you know your friends judgement? Many people who live next to a murderer say, "wow, he was such a nice guy, I can't believe he did it". We all have relationships with people that we would classify as "nice people" who are screaming psychopaths underneath their layer of civility.

[/ QUOTE ]

What's your axe to grind against me?

I posted that thing about the friend to say, FOR WHATEVER VALUE THE READER WANTS TO GIVE IT, that I know someone who knows the woman and would vouch for her. That's it. If you choose to give that any value, great. If not, great. I don't really give a [censored].


[/ QUOTE ]

I have no axe at all. You posted your friends opinion. I pointed out that his opinion was likely to be worthless because he wasn't ina position to know or judge. If you choose to give that any value, great. If not, you should think about it.

[ QUOTE ]

I don't know the woman. I don't care about the woman. But I am tremendously bothered when people -- young men, who have not experienced and likely will never experience sexual harrassment -- belittle her claim and jump to the Garden's defense, without knowing anything about the case other than what they read in one Yahoo article summarizing the first day of her testimony.


[/ QUOTE ]

I never jumped to the Garden's defense. I just pointed out that they had one, and that you were ignoring it.

[ QUOTE ]

This attitude that a woman who sues for being sexually harrassed, or who makes a claim that involves anything short of a rape, is automatically a money-grubbing whore is disgusting.

[/ QUOTE ]

I never called her a whore. I called her a ATTENTION WHORE. There is a big difference. She earned the title by calling press conferences to publicize her lawsuit.

The only real negative thing I said about her is I'm suspicious a real standout employee would immediately go the lawsuit route, instead of just landing another job. My experience is that there are people who claim sexual harrassment use it to shield themselves from their own performance problems.

At my last company we had a female salesperson who was very good, and got very good reviews, for a while. She began to slip in performance. She also slept with a few co-workers. She complained that one was harrassing her (he fell in love with her after she slept with him and wouldn't leave her alone). So we terminated him to cover our ass. Later we discovered that while she was complaining of harrassment, she'd occasionally still booty call the poor guy, which is one of the reasons he was so confused (the other reason was he was a very intense software engineer who rarely got laid so any girl that would sleep with him he immediately wanted to marry).

So I've learned to be suspicious of these cases and the motives of all involved.

[adios]

Hey niss I think zeek is a creep and the woman probably was sexually harassed by him. Don't you think that they'll need a little more than this woman's testimony to find for her? Zeek has no doubt has given a deposition and he probably won't look too good to the jury after testifying. I'm sure they have more than just her testimony though.

[niss]

Adios/Desert Cat,

I have no idea about the strength of her case. I have handled a few sexual harassment cases -- only from the management side. The plaintiff starts with an advantage when she is able to submit any competent proof of harassment. Management is then on the defensive. Here I don't like the record for the Garden -- she makes a complaint and winds up getting fired. On its face, that doesn't look good, and I would counsel management to do whatever they can NOT to fire the complainant unless absolutely necessary. But maybe in this case it was necessary. We'll see. Tough position to support but not impossible. The way the Garden has handled this, they either have an exceptionally strong case or they are a bunch of idiots. Given what we seem to know about Jim Dolan and Isiah Thomas, I am not adverse to believing the latter.

The idea that she could easily get a similar job is a difficult one to prove. She works in marketing (I think) for an NBA team. How many of them are there? 32? How many are in her area of the country? 2? 4 if you broadly define the area? How many other pro (non-NBA) basketball teams are there around? Not many. So it would be very, very difficult for her to get a similar job. And even if she could get another job, say for a NBDL team, or maybe for a college, she sure as hell ain't going to make as much money as she did with the Knicks.

You (Desert Cat) also don't know that she "immediately" went the lawsuit route. How do you know she didn't try to resolve this with them outside of court? I don't know that, and in EVERY case of this type I've handled the plaintiff has made a claim and attempted to negotiate a resolution before a lawsuit. Believe it or not, but people -- even lawyers, especially plaintiff's lawyers working on a contingency -- generally do not want to go into court unless they have to, for a variety of reasons.

As for her being an "attention whore", she is no different than any other plaintiff in a similar case against a prominent public entity. They use every angle they can extract as much money out of the defendant as possible. I think trying cases in the press stinks; but if you were her attorney you would be foolish not recommend that she use publicity as leverage. That doesn't mean that we can automatically assume that she is an "attention whore". If she has a real case, I am sure she did not go into this seeking "attention", and would prefer that the whole thing never happened. She is a professional woman living in a very ritzy area of New Jersey, with kids in public school. I am willing to assume she is intelligent enough to realize that she's not doing herself and her family any favors with publicity, and would not do so unless she and her attorney felt there was a necessity or real value to doing so. If she doesn't have a real case, well then I think we all would agree that she is a scumbag.

[Mike Gallo]

[ QUOTE ]
Adios/Desert Cat,

I have no idea about the strength of her case. I have handled a few sexual harassment cases -- only from the management side. The plaintiff starts with an advantage when she is able to submit any competent proof of harassment. Management is then on the defensive. Here I don't like the record for the Garden -- she makes a complaint and winds up getting fired. On its face, that doesn't look good, and I would counsel management to do whatever they can NOT to fire the complainant unless absolutely necessary. But maybe in this case it was necessary. We'll see. Tough position to support but not impossible. The way the Garden has handled this, they either have an exceptionally strong case or they are a bunch of idiots. Given what we seem to know about Jim Dolan and Isiah Thomas, I am not adverse to believing the latter.

The idea that she could easily get a similar job is a difficult one to prove. She works in marketing (I think) for an NBA team. How many of them are there? 32? How many are in her area of the country? 2? 4 if you broadly define the area? How many other pro (non-NBA) basketball teams are there around? Not many. So it would be very, very difficult for her to get a similar job. And even if she could get another job, say for a NBDL team, or maybe for a college, she sure as hell ain't going to make as much money as she did with the Knicks.

You (Desert Cat) also don't know that she "immediately" went the lawsuit route. How do you know she didn't try to resolve this with them outside of court? I don't know that, and in EVERY case of this type I've handled the plaintiff has made a claim and attempted to negotiate a resolution before a lawsuit. Believe it or not, but people -- even lawyers, especially plaintiff's lawyers working on a contingency -- generally do not want to go into court unless they have to, for a variety of reasons.

As for her being an "attention whore", she is no different than any other plaintiff in a similar case against a prominent public entity. They use every angle they can extract as much money out of the defendant as possible. I think trying cases in the press stinks; but if you were her attorney you would be foolish not recommend that she use publicity as leverage. That doesn't mean that we can automatically assume that she is an "attention whore". If she has a real case, I am sure she did not go into this seeking "attention", and would prefer that the whole thing never happened. She is a professional woman living in a very ritzy area of New Jersey, with kids in public school. I am willing to assume she is intelligent enough to realize that she's not doing herself and her family any favors with publicity, and would not do so unless she and her attorney felt there was a necessity or real value to doing so. If she doesn't have a real case, well then I think we all would agree that she is a scumbag.

[/ QUOTE ]

Niss,

Exceptional post.

I listened to the details of the case on the way to my office this morning on WFAN 660 AM radio NY.

This story graced the covers of all three local papers.