The Latest On The Zion Williamson/Gina Ford Legal Tussle

Here’s the latest on the Zion Williamson/Gina Ford legal tussle. As you may recall, Williamson signed with Ford’s agency initially then decided to go with the vastly more powerful CAA instead.

Some of the legal stuff is frankly beyond us and if we try to comment on it extensively we run the risk of looking ignorant so we’ll leave contract law to people who know more.

Like, say, this guy.

We do know that there are competing lawsuits in North Carolina and Florida and that Ford recently filed a motion intended to force Williamson to discuss allegedly illegal inducements from Duke and Nike.

Anyway, here’s the conclusion from the article linked above:

“The judge could keep this lawsuit from sprawling. The court could decide to split the discovery and trial of each of these issues. The breach of contract claims could be argued separately from the tortious interference claims...Typically this is a tough sell, as proof of one issue is necessarily bound up in the others. Here there is a pretty clear line of demarcation because the reality remains: You cannot interfere or breach a contract that was illegal from the start. Therefore, it might make sense to focus the court’s energy on resolving only the threshold issue of contract validity.

“The last thing in favor of a bifurcation process is the timing. Williamson could not breach and Nike/CAA could not interfere with a contract before the contract even existed. These arguments will focus on contract formation and validity issues almost exclusively.”