Pacquiao, Mayweather court battle
The Filipino Senate ,Sport man Pacquiao and Mayweather court battle: ‘He
acted like a mob fixer!’
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| Source: Rappler |
An attorney for a man who alleges he was subjected to
attempted extortion after asking to be paid $8.6 million for helping to set
Manny Pacquiao’s fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. told a judge Tuesday that a
lawyer for the Filipino boxer used strong-arm tactics to try and force the
plaintiff to accept a lowball settlement.
Attorney
Amman Khan, who represents server/actor Gabriel Rueda, alleged that lawyer
Keith M. Davidson urged Rueda to settle for $50,000, or face the possibility he
would not work in Hollywood again.
Davidson
also said he would help Rueda acquire more acting jobs with the help of a
talent agency, Khan alleged.
“He
acted like a mob fixer. No lawyer makes these kinds of threats,” Khan said,
alleging that Davidson also told Rueda, “Look, this is boxing, nobody cares if
anybody gets hurt.”
After
hearing the arguments on Davidson lawyer Jason Liang’s motion to dismiss
Rueda’s claims for attempted extortion and intentional infliction of emotional
distress, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Sotelo took the case under
submission.
On July
26, he took a similar motion by Pacquiao’s lawyers under submission. He did not
say when he would rule on either motion.
Rueda
filed hid lawsuit — which also alleges breach of an oral contract, fraud and
unjust enrichment — on Feb. 4, naming Pacquiao and his trainer, Freddie Roach,
CBS, Showtime Entertainment and Davidson, described in the plaintiff’s court
papers as a lawyer for “Roach, Pacquiao and a few other powerful people.”
Rueda’s
suit states he served CBS President Leslie Moonves while working at Craig’s
restaurant in West Hollywood and told Moonves he could introduce him to Roach
in order to break the ice between Al Haymon and Bob Arum, the promoters for
Mayweather and Pacquiao, respectively.
The
lawsuit states that Rueda arranged a meeting between Roach and Moonves, with an
agreement that he would get a 2 percent finder’s fee of gross fight proceeds
paid to CBS, Showtime Network, Pacquiao and Roach.
Davidson,
on behalf of Pacquiao and Roach, met with Rueda a month later at a coffeehouse
at Sunset Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue, according to the lawsuit. Davidson told
Rueda that if he did not accept the settlement proposal and sign a release, he
would lose his job at Craig’s and “never work as an actor in this town again,”
the suit alleges.
After
Rueda called his boss at the restaurant and confirmed that Davidson contacted
Craig’s, the restaurant management told him they would fire him if he did not
accept the offer, because they wanted to keep Moonves’ business, according to
the lawsuit.
Liang
said the $50,000 tender to Rueda was actually a counter-offer to a proposal by
Rueda during a previous meeting. Liang said there was nothing unusual in
Davidson’s remarks, saying lawyers can sometimes be aggressive during
settlement negotiations. He denied the offer to Rueda was a tax-free, “under
the table” proposal.
Liang
told the judge that the $50,000 offer Davidson made to Rueda to amounted to
pre-litigation communications that are not actionable, the same argument
Pacquiao’s attorney, David Marroso, made last week in his dismissal motion.
But the
judge said Davidson’s alleged remarks that Rueda might never work as an actor
again “can easily be read like talking to a Mafia lawyer.”
Khan
said that despite Pacquiao’s poor performance because of a shoulder injury, the
public watched in large numbers as Mayweather beat him by unanimous decision on
May 2, 2015.
Source:
MY News LA from –City News Service
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