OXFORD — A court decision reversal released Thursday will allow a lawsuit filed against the NCAA by former Ole Miss football staffer David Saunders to continue its process after it was initially blocked in September of 2020.
“He’s going to be able to pursue the merits of his case in circuit court,” Saunders’ attorney, Jim Waide, told the Daily Journal.
Following its own investigation, the NCAA ruled that Saunders committed infractions based on the falsifying of recruits’ ACT scores while at Ole Miss, claims that Saunders has denied.
Saunders served as a Rebels staff member three separate times in both coaching and administration — the last time coming in 2010. The NCAA gave him a pair of show-clause directives for infractions allegedly committed during his time with the Rebels and the University of Louisiana. The show-clauses began in 2016 and are to run for a total of 16 years through 2032.
A show-cause penalty makes it unlikely for schools to hire a coach who has been punished, as the school will also have those penalties levied against it unless its appeal to the NCAA Committee on Infractions is successful, according to CBS Sports.
Following the second show-clause announcement in 2017, Saunders and his lawyer contemplated a lawsuit against the NCAA, according to Thursday’s court decision. Saunders decided against doing so at the time as he cautioned that, “launch(ing) a legal challenge against an organization as large and powerful as the NCAA would cost a million dollars,” the decision reads.
After seeing another college football coach sue the NCAA, Saunders eventually filed his own lawsuit against the NCAA in the Lafayette County Court in April of 2020, charging, “negligence, malicious interference with employment and denial of due process under the Mississippi constitution and ‘usurpation of judicial function of the State,’” according to court records.
He amended his complaint in June of that year and asked for “compensatory damages — actual damages for lost income, mental anxiety, stress, and damages to reputation … punitive damages to deter the NCAA from future intentional and grossly negligent acts … declaratory relief from the show-cause restriction … and attorneys’ fees and expenses.”
The NCAA filed a motion for summary judgment, saying the suit should be blocked due to judicial estoppel — he had not mentioned the potential suit in Chapter 7 bankruptcy claims filed in 2018 — and the Lafayette County Circuit Court ruled in favor of the NCAA, saying only a bankruptcy trustee could rule on it.
Saunders appealed the decision in 2020 and, on Thursday, the court ruled in favor of Saunders. The case will now go to the circuit court, Waide said, where a judge will determine whether the case will go to jury.
Saunders is out of coaching currently and working at the University of West Florida. If his lawsuit against the NCAA were to be successful, the show-clause directives would be dropped, according to Waide.
“The charge that he cheated or helped cheat on an ACT is very serious and harmful to his reputation,” Waide said. “… So for that reason, (Thursday was) a big day.”
Another former Ole Miss staffer, Barney Farrar — who the NCAA also gave a show-cause because of alleged violations while with the Rebels — filed a lawsuit against the NCAA in July of 2020 claiming “negligence and the denial of a fair hearing, malicious interference with employment, denial of due process and usurpation of judicial function.”
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