The saga of former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling took another turn on Friday when he filed a lawsuit against TMZ Productions Inc. and V. Stiviano, his former mistress.
The lawsuit arises out of recordings taken by Stiviano of conversations between she and Sterling in which Sterling made a number of racist comments. One such comment involved him rebuking Stiviano for posing in a photograph with former NBA star Magic Johnson. The conversations occurred in September 2013, and were released in April 2014. Sterling claims that the conversations were recorded without his knowledge, heavily edited, taken out of context, and in some cases “… reflect[ed] conversations that … never occurred.”
The complaint claims, in part:
The fallout from the worldwide dissemination of the illicit recording of a private conversation between plaintiff and defendant Stiviano is unparalleled in terms of the damage and reputational harm done to the plaintiff … Sterling has had his privacy rights violated and trampled on.
More specifically, following the release of the audio recordings, the NBA Commissioner – whose name, ironically, is Adam Silver – promptly banned Sterling from the NBA for life and fined him $2.5 million. Silver further threatened that if Sterling failed to sell the Clippers, the NBA would seize and auction the team. Subsequently, Sterling’s wife obtained court approval to remove Sterling from the trust that owned the Clippers so the team could be sold. It was ultimately purchased by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
In the lawsuit, Sterling is seeking all copies of the recordings currently possessed by the Defendants as well as the greater of either (a) $5,000 in statutory fees; or (b) three times the amount of actual damages that allegedly resulted from the release of the audio.