By Mark Vester
Talkative attorney Judd Burstein likes his chances in the Manny Pacquiao defamation suit. Burstein, besides representing Shane Mosley in the lawsuit against BALCO founder Victor Conte, is also representing Oscar De La Hoya and Richard Schaefer in the suit filed against them by Manny Pacquiao.
Last December Pacquiao filed a lawsuit against the Mayweathers, De La Hoya and Schaefer, claiming the parties had accused him of taking performance-enhancing drugs. Burstein says there is no way Pacquiao will win the suit.
"The cases that I've really focused on are the cases against Richard and Oscar, because we're working together on this. I don't think that Jesus Christ could come down off of the cross and win Manny's case against Richard and Oscar," Burstein said to AOL's Boxing FanHouse.
Burstein said De La Hoya and Schaefer were only expressing their opinion and never stated anything as fact. He says Pacquiao was poorly advised to move forward with the suit and is throwing his money away on the case. Many have said the same about Mosley and the thousands of dollars he must have paid Burstein to continue the case with Conte. Burstein complains about the media, how it continues to talk about Mosley's steroid use from 2003 and why the media won't let it go. Maybe if Burstein did not advise Mosley to file a lawsuit against Conte in 2008, we would have forgotten about it and might have let it go.
"It's a shockingly stupid case. Suing two people for only expressing an opinion, and it's not that anyone else hasn't expressed similar opinions. That's an opinion that half of the people in boxing have expressed. And they never said, as a fact, that Pacquiao was using performance enhancing drugs," Burstein said.
"What they said was ...given a whole host of factors that are public, that, you know, this is why they have an opinion. And the opinion is only that there's a reason to ask questions about Manny. This is America. They have a right to express their opinion."
On the other hand, I think that Manny has been very, very poorly advised. And I think that it's a shame. I think that he's throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars down the tubes on a case that can't be won and that is then going to make him look terrible when he loses it."
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