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Probate trial set for Sterling
Jeff Hawkins is an award-winning sportswriter with more than four decades in the industry (print and digital media). A freelance writer/stay-at-home dad since 2008, Hawkins started his career with newspaper stints in Michigan, North Carolina, Florida, Upstate New York and Illinois, where he earned the 2004 APSE first-place award for column writing (under 40,000 circulation). As a beat writer, he covered NASCAR Winston Cup events at NHIS (1999-2003), the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks (2003-06) and the NFL's Carolina Panthers (2011-12). Hawkins penned four youth sports books, including a Michael Jordan biography. Hawkins' main hobbies include mountain bike riding, 5k trail runs at the Whitewater Center in Charlotte, N.C., and live music.
All posts by Jeff HawkinsUpdated15 Oct 2021
A trial is scheduled for July 7-10 in Los Angeles County probate court to rule on the removal of Los Angeles Clippers co-owner Donald Sterling as a trustee from the Sterling Family Trust that sold the franchise.
Shelly Sterling took over as the sole trustee after neurologists determined that her husband was mentally incapacitated to make business decisions and her attorneys negotiated the sale of the Clippers to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on May 29 for $2 billion.
Donald Sterling was banned for life by NBA commissioner Adam Sterling and fined $2.5 million last month for his racist comments.
Bobby Samini, one of Donald Sterling’s lawyers, said he plans to utilize independent experts to examine Sterling’s mental state, according to ESPN. Two neurologists already have evaluated Sterling and their findings were reviewed by a third expert.
Sterling’s medical reports were submitted to the court on Wednesday. The documents show that Sterling suffers from “mild cognitive impairment consistent with early Alzheimer’s Disease.”
One doctor, Meril S. Platzer, indicated that Sterling could not spell “world” backward in tests, didn’t know the season of the year and struggled to draw a clock.
Samini argues that Sterling is not mentally impaired and believes the court will rule that he was wrongfully removed as a trustee. The attorney added that Sterling remains resolute in his willingness to fight the NBA over termination of his Clippers ownership.
A week earlier, Sterling lawyer Max Blecher said Sterling would agree to the sale of the team but wanted the NBA to drop the lifetime ban and the fine, which Silver said would not happen.
So the NBA could be in for a long battle that Sterling is prepared to wage.
“Now his objective is to demonstrate for everybody that the NBA is a damned hypocrite,” Samini said. “We’re going to pull every case against the NBA. Then we’ll demonstrate that the culture of racism and gender discrimination is born at the NBA, where Adam Silver has worked in a high-level position for a long time.”
