Atlanta Personal Injury Lawyers Blog

We get very excited in the office when legal issues collide with college football.

Baylor University claims they are experiencing injuries on and off the field after Texas A&M applied for membership to the South Eastern Conference earlier this fall. On Sept. 26, 2011 the SEC accepted Texas A&M to expand the conference to thirteen teams, leaving the (not so) Big 12 with nine teams.

Baylor University took action, fearing the defection of Texas A&M may lead to a Big 12 breakup, leaving Baylor in a less prestigious league with less TV revenue dollars. Baylor's president, Ken Starr (famous for nearly bringing down President Clinton) sent an email to University of Georgia President Michael Adams outlining potential financial damages if Texas A&M left the Big 12. Baylor is estimated to lose more than $20 million in annual TV revenue and merchandising if the Big 12 dissolved.

This dispute plays out as the typical small town plaintiff, Baylor - a Baptist university with 13,000 students, against big business, Texas A&M - a state school with 50,000 students and NFL alumni. Baylor is situated to lose more money than other schools because it is the only private school in the conference and is considered an afterthought because it does not have the rich traditions, size, public funding and notoriety of conference rivals.

Experts have suggested that the threat of a lawsuit was a legal tactic used to stall Texas A&M from leaving the Big 12. However, conference realignment cases have prevailed in the past. Last fall, the Western Athletic Conference sued Nevada and Fresno State in hopes of keeping them from defecting to the Mountain West Conference. The two schools agreed to remain in the WAC one more year and would pay a buyout of $900,000 each. In 2003, members of the Big East sued to prevent Boston College, the University of Miami and Virginia Tech from joining the Atlantic Coast Conference. A settlement was reached where the five Big East plaintiff schools to receive $1 million each.

The good news is that no matter which conference your team ends up in, they will start the season undefeated 2012.

Once again we were able to take a breach of contract case and turn it into a six figure win for our client. Construction arbitration by its nature requires detailed preparation to protect a client's rights under a contract. In this case, our client provided large scale resort management services to a large real estate developer in north Georgia. When the developer breached under the terms of the contract, we conducted a thorough review of the financials, agreements, and possible resolutions before presenting our case in arbitration.