FLASH: Suh/Jacobs sue USADA, not for Landis
The AP/Eddie Pells is reporting that Suh and Jacobs are taking USADA to court to prevent testing of a cyclist's B sample in the face of a negative A sample.
The report says the case has been filed on behalf of a "John Doe", and Landis has denied it is him.
It sounds like another cyclist has run afoul of the gambit that USADA pulled with Landis' B samples, and turned to Suh and Jacobs to fight it.
If there's one thing Suh learned from Landis, it's not to expect much out of USADA and arbitrators in the way of due-process in evidentiary rulings. (Jacobs already learned that in Hamilton). Better to go to a real court before it's too late
USADA counsel Bill Bock calls the suit, "utterly frivolous and morally bankrupt."
He continues, "seeking to prohibit analysis of a sample certainly raises the question of, what are they hiding from? What are they seeking to hide?"
We could ask very similar questions about the EDF files and other discovery that USADA refused, and has still refused to produce for the Landis defense.
The "nothing to hide" and "we're looking for the truth" rhetoric seems to flow one direction from Colorado Springs. It's used when it suits their prosecutions, and never to protect the rights of a potentially innocent athlete.
"It's for da kids," don'tcha know.
16 comments:
It's about time something like this happened.
You can always tell when corruption has taken root in an organisation - they stop trying to hide it because it has become the norm.
That's what USADA demonstrated during the Landis case. Hopefully this will be a wake up call for them.
According to Catlin, "Don Catlin, former director of the UCLA lab, said he couldn't recall being asked to test a 'B' sample after a negative 'A.'
"It would certainly be unusual," he said.
Catlin said he wasn't familiar enough with the intricacies of the code to know if the practice of testing a 'B' after a negative 'A' violated any rules."
DIdn't Catlin help write the WADA rules? Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm losing more and more respect for Catlin.
It's quite interesting to follow all the "can't recalls" of WADA lab directors. Must be a special adjustment specification...
Johnson should REALLLY be paying attention now, as this is becoming rather intrusive and biased against the athletes.
This is also further evidence, flowing all the way back to 2004, that the ADA's will go to any length to either fish for a positive, or cover up for some level of ineptitude performed during testing.
I give up...
Regarding Leukemins suspension:
The Commission was not persuaded by arguments that he relied on the doctor's advice and was therefore innocent. "Even if the product is prescribed by a doctor, the rider still remains responsible for what he is administered," it ruled.
If a doctor says take this...who is going to argue with him? I guess cyclists now need a medical degree to participate.
Mike
Did that shit Leogrande get lucky again? This is getting sickening.
I'm soooo sick of hearing the guys with the dirtiest reps bitch about USADA or tainted supplements.
Nice to have Mr $300 jeans picking up the legal tab.
Sweet blog. Barf.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany have found a genetic factor that affects our ability to learn from our errors. The scientists demonstrated that men carrying the A1 mutation, which reduces the amount of dopamine D2 receptors in the brain, are less successful at learning to avoid mistakes than men who do not carry this genetic mutation.
This finding has the potential to improve our understanding of USADA's thought processes.
http://www.tfot.info/news/1094/some-people-never-learn.html
Channeling the newest member of the USADA aristocracy, Bill Bock, One wonders how friviloous this injunction was and how morally bankrupt the lawyers filing it were? Also, what do the worker's have to hide?
The point, Mr. Bock, is how will your failures to follow your own rules of employment play in a Court that you don't own? Maybe you can get Joe Papp to testify.
This opinion comes from the very same 9th Circuit the Suh/Jacobs case may end up winding into from the State Court it is currently filed in. Moreover, the choice of venue is interesting and one would assume that good lawyers would file under a California State Law favoring the plaintiff rather than in Federal Court.
USADA's rule against pending case comment, which Bock clasically notes and then violates, probably also is designed to prevent its spokesmen from embarassment.
" NASA contract employees win injunction against background checks
By Alyssa Rosenberg arosenberg@govexec.com
January 14, 2008
A federal judge issued an injunction on Friday to stop NASA from performing background checks on contract employees at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., operated by the California Institute of Technology, while the employees' privacy-invasion lawsuit against the government continues.
The injunction is only the latest development in a complicated legal battle, which Judge Kim Wardlaw of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said presented JPL employees with "a stark choice -- either violation of their constitutional rights or loss of their jobs."
"This is a victory for all NASA employees and a victory for those who wrote the constitution of the United States," Robert Nelson, the JPL scientist who is the lead plaintiff in the case, said after the ruling.
A Caltech spokeswoman told the Associated Press that the university would comply with any court ruling on the background checks.
NASA revised its security protocol in 2005 to standardize background investigations for federal and contractor employees, and required JPL's compliance at the beginning of 2007, when it modified the agency's contract with Caltech.
"Caltech vigorously opposed the change," Wardlaw wrote in her decision, but once NASA modified the contract, "the university subsequently adopted a policy -- not required by NASA -- that all JPL employees who did not successfully complete the [background check] process...would be deemed to have voluntarily resigned their Caltech employment."
The school's decision to set higher penalties than the federal government for resisting the background check process helped Wardlaw decide two legal questions. First, mandating termination of employment made harm to JPL employees clear, she wrote. Second, imposing the penalty undercut Caltech's claim that the school shouldn't be a defendant in the suit. Central District Judge Otis Wright ruled on Jan. 9 that JPL employees had failed to prove the lab's liability, but Wardlaw's decision appeared to override his ruling.
The information sought during the background checks includes standard inquiries into issues such as drug use and addiction treatment, but could be expanded to topics including sexual orientation and behavior, which JPL employees argued was unnecessarily invasive. Wardlaw appeared to agree that the open-ended nature of the background checks, which allowed the government to solicit a wide range of information about employees whose work did not directly involve sensitive issues, posed an immediate threat to JPL scientists.
Form 42, which the government uses to query employees' references, "seeks highly personal information using an open-ended questioning technique, including asking for 'any adverse information' or 'additional information which . . . may have a bearing on this person's suitability for government employment,' " Wardlaw wrote. "Any harm that results from Form 42's dissemination and the information consequently provided to the government will be concrete and immediate."
That harm, Wardlaw continued, was compounded by the fact that Caltech's rule made the background checks a mandatory condition of employment. She rebuked the lower court for suggesting that the harm to JPL employees was minimal.
"The district court erroneously concluded that appellants will not suffer any irreparable harm because they could be retroactively compensated for any temporary denial of employment," Wardlaw wrote. "There is a substantial risk that a number of employees will not be able to finance such a principled position and so will be coerced into submitting . . . Unlike monetary injuries, constitutional violations cannot be adequately remedied through damages. . . . The loss of one's job does not carry merely monetary consequences; it carries emotional damages and stress, which cannot be compensated by mere payment of back wages."
The case will continue at a Feb.15 hearing."
Clean Bro,
What do you mean Leogrande getting lucky again?
What I find on him is that he won the US Crit in '06, and is now with Rock Racing.
Is there other stuff we don't know?
TBV
Word is KL gave a positive after coming up big in Superweek.
KL denied it but the talk didn't stop. Even Velo News asked Ball about it. Everything that comes outta that guys mouth is garbage. He thinks the chubby sprinter can win the Tour De France. Jesus Fricken Christ.
Maybe somethin happened in 2006 and USADA was watchin Leogrande. He has a worse rep than Flandis.
Hmmm.
I won't deny that Ball talks a lot of junk, and that I'm glad Landis hasn't joined that circus.
If Leogrande had a positive at superweek, why didn't he get nailed then? Why would USADA only chase him now? That doesn't make a lot of sense.
TBV
bill hue,
You said a lot of other stuff, but :
"The point, Mr. Bock, is how will your failures to follow your own rules of employment play in a Court that you don't own? Maybe you can get Joe Papp to testify"
kind of hit the spot for me, especially the Joe Papp comment ... LOL !
I'm thinking John Doe was planning to race at ToC next month.
By now everyone must understand that Floyd Landis isa bald faced liar, drug addict, meanspirited bully, moron and steroid and blood doping loser.
He could NOT ride a tricycle w/o drugs.
His fans were dummer than a sack of bricks.
Yes, all this is brutal truth.
Next steroid liar.
Thus ends our experiment in allowing anonymous comments again.
TBV
I guess m will just have to start posting under his own name again.
(Actually, that's just a taunt aimed at luring m out of hiding. I thought he was coming back after the holidays?)
Just four days until that brief is due (according to Floyd), so maybe we'll hear from him after that.
Post a Comment