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By Teri Thompson and Nathaniel Vinton
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITERS
Originally Published:Thursday, April 15th 2010, 3:00 PM
Updated: Thursday, April 15th 2010, 3:00 PM
Source
The contentious and costly defamation suit boxer Shane Mosley filed against Victor Conte in 2008 came to a head outside a Manhattan courtroom Thursday, with both sides leaving a hostile and fruitless settlement conference vowing there would be blood.
"They just want to muzzle me," said Conte, who left the courthouse and promptly posted on YouTube portions of an October 2009 deposition Mosley gave in the case, in which the welterweight champ admits knowingly using the banned endurance-booster EPO.
"Mosley admits under oath he took EPO," said Conte. "He admits I explained how dangerous it was. He admits it would help for performance-enhancing purposes. And he admits that he took it before anyone could have checked with the boxing commission. Shane Mosley knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs."
The basis of Mosley's $12 million complaint is the claim that he didn't know the steroid creams and expensive injectibles the BALCO founder was providing him were dangerous, banned drugs. The suit arose after Conte challenged Mosley's statements to reporters that he didn't know what he was taking and said he would write a book describing what Mosley knew.
Conte was already uploading the video by the time Burstein emerged from the heated talks, no settlement in hand.
"Half of me is disappointed that I can't just put all this behind for Shane," Burstein said. "But on the other hand, destroying Mr. Conte in a courtroom is something I would almost pay to do."
Burstein acknowledged that Mosley had made the EPO admission, but apparently frustrated that Conte turned down his settlement offers, vowed he would prove to a jury that Conte has been inconsistent in his own testimony over the years.
"I can hardly think of an activity that would be more fun to do, and easy. He'd be slinking off the witness stand trying to see if he can wear Groucho Marx glasses to disguise his identity."
And Burstein wasn't finished.
"There's a very good chance that my dog could win this case," Burstein said.
When asked if the dog was a boxer, Burstein said no.
"It's a toy red poodle," he said.
Conte couldn't resist joining in what had begun to sound like pre-fight trash-talking.
"Even Judd Burstein's poodle could figure out Shane Mosley knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs," he said.
After he viewed the video, Burstein said the comments were "taken out of context," and offered to provide the entire deposition to any news organization that wanted to see it. He then said that his client had "always admitted to knowingly using EPO," a statement that confounded Conte and his lawyer, Tom Harvey. In his lawsuit, Mosley claimed that Conte "falsely stated that Mosley ‘knew precisely what (he was) using' and that, notwithstanding Mosley's prior public claim that conte had misled Mosley about the legality of the products provided by Conte, "(it) was all explained up front and there was no deception."
The complaint is not unlike the $25 million suit that sprinter Marion Jones brought against Conte in 2004, costing him hundreds of thousands in defense fees before Jones admitted using BALCO's products and went to prison.
"The Mosley case is simply the Marion Jones case with boxing gloves," Conte said. "It didn't turn out too well for Marion Jones either."
Mosley, whose megafight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. is only two weeks away, was not present for the confidential proceedings, parts of which took place in the chambers of New York state court Judge Louis York. Burstein agreed with Conte that "hostile" was the right description.
"He apparently feels that I'm a bully, I take that as a compliment," said Burstein, who declined to say how much his client had spent on the case.
In the YouTube video segments, Mosley is asked about July 26, 2003, the day when everyone agrees Mosley came with his trainer, Daryl Hudson, to the Burlingame offices of BALCO, where Conte gave Mosley the lab's designer steroids and taught him how to shoot himself up with EPO.
Six years later in the deposition, Mosley sounded more like an under-prepared schoolchild than a fearsome welterweight, nervously admitting that he knew he was taking EPO.
"You knew it was EPO that day, correct?" asked Harvey, Conte's attorney.
"Um, I, yeah, I guess, I knew it was something, yeah," said Mosley, nervously.
Since Mosley had maintained Conte tricked him, Harvey asked Mosley for clarification.
"Prior to going to the grand jury, in December of 2003, did you know that you were taking EPO, yes or no?"
Mosley eyes darted back and forth for a few seconds. Then he shrugged and said, "Yes."
Mosley then stole a quick glance at his own counsel, who couldn't have been thrilled with the response (elsewhere in the deposition Mosley claimed he learned he took EPO months later, when a BALCO grand juror told him).
For Conte, the case has become downright surreal.
"What Shane Mosley seems to have forgotten is that there were three eyewitnesses in the room with him while he was knowingly injecting performancing enhancing drugs," Conte says. "Shane was moving up in weight class and had lost his last two fights. He wanted to find some juice. He did all the talking that day at BALCO."
Mosley and Conte have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the case since Mosley filed suit April 2, 2008. The suit came after Conte suggested in newspaper interviews that his tell-all book about the BALCO doping ring would include details about Mosley's case. The book project has since been derailed.
In the course of the litigation, Mosley's grand jury testimony has been released, along with doping calendars Conte drew up for him that reflect his meticulous drug regimen in the lead-up to his fight against Oscar De La Hoya in October of 2003. Mosley and his trainer flew to the Bay Area in the summer of 2003, collected $1,850 worth of drugs (including "the clear" — the then-undetectable designer steroid THG) — and "the cream" — a masking substance), and took a tutorial from Conte on how to inject EPO and apply the steroids.
Mosley shipped the materials home to Los Angeles rather than fly with them, and tapered off them per Conte's instructions just before the De La Hoya fight, despite his claims that he didn't know BALCO was selling him banned drugs.
"Shane has never denied right from the start that he made a mistake with respect to trusting Victor Conte," Burstein said in a teleconference with about 200 reporters last month. "Let's not forget that Shane took a lie detector test that he did not know what he was taking and he's standing up by suing Conte over the issue."
York may yet dismiss the Conte case. At a hearing last year, he asked one of Mosley's attorneys why Mosley didn't get the substances at his pharmacy, if the boxer thought BALCO's goods were mere vitamins.
Mosley was never charged in the BALCO case, but his shady past caused the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency to hesitate before agreeing work with him and provide Olympic-style drug-testing in advance of Mosley's blockbuster fight against Mayweather. Negotiations for a previous bout between Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao foundered over drug-testing procedures, and Pacquiao has sued Mayweather and his supporters for defamation after they aired suspicions about Pacquiao's objection to blood testing.
Mosley's suit against Conte was filed in April of 2008. In August of that year, when Conte's lawyers seemed on the verge of convincing a federal court in California that the suit was meritless and abusive, Mosley's attorneys dropped the suit and promptly re-filed it in New York.
"The thing that we have that they don't," Conte said, "is the power of the truth."
By Teri Thompson and Nathaniel Vinton
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITERS
Originally Published:Thursday, April 15th 2010, 3:00 PM
Updated: Thursday, April 15th 2010, 3:00 PM
Source
The contentious and costly defamation suit boxer Shane Mosley filed against Victor Conte in 2008 came to a head outside a Manhattan courtroom Thursday, with both sides leaving a hostile and fruitless settlement conference vowing there would be blood.
"They just want to muzzle me," said Conte, who left the courthouse and promptly posted on YouTube portions of an October 2009 deposition Mosley gave in the case, in which the welterweight champ admits knowingly using the banned endurance-booster EPO.
"Mosley admits under oath he took EPO," said Conte. "He admits I explained how dangerous it was. He admits it would help for performance-enhancing purposes. And he admits that he took it before anyone could have checked with the boxing commission. Shane Mosley knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs."
The basis of Mosley's $12 million complaint is the claim that he didn't know the steroid creams and expensive injectibles the BALCO founder was providing him were dangerous, banned drugs. The suit arose after Conte challenged Mosley's statements to reporters that he didn't know what he was taking and said he would write a book describing what Mosley knew.
Conte was already uploading the video by the time Burstein emerged from the heated talks, no settlement in hand.
"Half of me is disappointed that I can't just put all this behind for Shane," Burstein said. "But on the other hand, destroying Mr. Conte in a courtroom is something I would almost pay to do."
Burstein acknowledged that Mosley had made the EPO admission, but apparently frustrated that Conte turned down his settlement offers, vowed he would prove to a jury that Conte has been inconsistent in his own testimony over the years.
"I can hardly think of an activity that would be more fun to do, and easy. He'd be slinking off the witness stand trying to see if he can wear Groucho Marx glasses to disguise his identity."
And Burstein wasn't finished.
"There's a very good chance that my dog could win this case," Burstein said.
When asked if the dog was a boxer, Burstein said no.
"It's a toy red poodle," he said.
Conte couldn't resist joining in what had begun to sound like pre-fight trash-talking.
"Even Judd Burstein's poodle could figure out Shane Mosley knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs," he said.
After he viewed the video, Burstein said the comments were "taken out of context," and offered to provide the entire deposition to any news organization that wanted to see it. He then said that his client had "always admitted to knowingly using EPO," a statement that confounded Conte and his lawyer, Tom Harvey. In his lawsuit, Mosley claimed that Conte "falsely stated that Mosley ‘knew precisely what (he was) using' and that, notwithstanding Mosley's prior public claim that conte had misled Mosley about the legality of the products provided by Conte, "(it) was all explained up front and there was no deception."
The complaint is not unlike the $25 million suit that sprinter Marion Jones brought against Conte in 2004, costing him hundreds of thousands in defense fees before Jones admitted using BALCO's products and went to prison.
"The Mosley case is simply the Marion Jones case with boxing gloves," Conte said. "It didn't turn out too well for Marion Jones either."
Mosley, whose megafight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. is only two weeks away, was not present for the confidential proceedings, parts of which took place in the chambers of New York state court Judge Louis York. Burstein agreed with Conte that "hostile" was the right description.
"He apparently feels that I'm a bully, I take that as a compliment," said Burstein, who declined to say how much his client had spent on the case.
In the YouTube video segments, Mosley is asked about July 26, 2003, the day when everyone agrees Mosley came with his trainer, Daryl Hudson, to the Burlingame offices of BALCO, where Conte gave Mosley the lab's designer steroids and taught him how to shoot himself up with EPO.
Six years later in the deposition, Mosley sounded more like an under-prepared schoolchild than a fearsome welterweight, nervously admitting that he knew he was taking EPO.
"You knew it was EPO that day, correct?" asked Harvey, Conte's attorney.
"Um, I, yeah, I guess, I knew it was something, yeah," said Mosley, nervously.
Since Mosley had maintained Conte tricked him, Harvey asked Mosley for clarification.
"Prior to going to the grand jury, in December of 2003, did you know that you were taking EPO, yes or no?"
Mosley eyes darted back and forth for a few seconds. Then he shrugged and said, "Yes."
Mosley then stole a quick glance at his own counsel, who couldn't have been thrilled with the response (elsewhere in the deposition Mosley claimed he learned he took EPO months later, when a BALCO grand juror told him).
For Conte, the case has become downright surreal.
"What Shane Mosley seems to have forgotten is that there were three eyewitnesses in the room with him while he was knowingly injecting performancing enhancing drugs," Conte says. "Shane was moving up in weight class and had lost his last two fights. He wanted to find some juice. He did all the talking that day at BALCO."
Mosley and Conte have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the case since Mosley filed suit April 2, 2008. The suit came after Conte suggested in newspaper interviews that his tell-all book about the BALCO doping ring would include details about Mosley's case. The book project has since been derailed.
In the course of the litigation, Mosley's grand jury testimony has been released, along with doping calendars Conte drew up for him that reflect his meticulous drug regimen in the lead-up to his fight against Oscar De La Hoya in October of 2003. Mosley and his trainer flew to the Bay Area in the summer of 2003, collected $1,850 worth of drugs (including "the clear" — the then-undetectable designer steroid THG) — and "the cream" — a masking substance), and took a tutorial from Conte on how to inject EPO and apply the steroids.
Mosley shipped the materials home to Los Angeles rather than fly with them, and tapered off them per Conte's instructions just before the De La Hoya fight, despite his claims that he didn't know BALCO was selling him banned drugs.
"Shane has never denied right from the start that he made a mistake with respect to trusting Victor Conte," Burstein said in a teleconference with about 200 reporters last month. "Let's not forget that Shane took a lie detector test that he did not know what he was taking and he's standing up by suing Conte over the issue."
York may yet dismiss the Conte case. At a hearing last year, he asked one of Mosley's attorneys why Mosley didn't get the substances at his pharmacy, if the boxer thought BALCO's goods were mere vitamins.
Mosley was never charged in the BALCO case, but his shady past caused the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency to hesitate before agreeing work with him and provide Olympic-style drug-testing in advance of Mosley's blockbuster fight against Mayweather. Negotiations for a previous bout between Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao foundered over drug-testing procedures, and Pacquiao has sued Mayweather and his supporters for defamation after they aired suspicions about Pacquiao's objection to blood testing.
Mosley's suit against Conte was filed in April of 2008. In August of that year, when Conte's lawyers seemed on the verge of convincing a federal court in California that the suit was meritless and abusive, Mosley's attorneys dropped the suit and promptly re-filed it in New York.
"The thing that we have that they don't," Conte said, "is the power of the truth."