The NCAA has suffered a lot of self-inflicted legal injuries over the years, but the entity decided it couldn’t sustain the revelation that its lawyers from Holland & Knight — man, two Holland & Knight stories in one day! — were privately dissing the judge and mocking the plaintiff’s medical conditions. So it got different lawyers.
GoLocalProv, the same publication that first reported on the offending emails, reports that the association has installed Kate Gehl, a Foley & Lardner partner working out of Milwaukee, as lead counsel in Jake Picard v. National Collegiate Athletic Association. Gehl’s opening assignment is to argue against a temporary restraining order in front of a judge whose intelligence her predecessors questioned.
Not the ideal set up when inheriting a file.
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The backstory, for anyone who missed it: Jake Picard, a Providence-area football player who became an All-American at Villanova before tearing his ACL five games into last season, seeks a medical hardship waiver to play this season. Villanova petitioned for that waiver on his behalf, citing the knee as well as intestinal issues. The NCAA denied it multiple times, prompting Picard to sue in Pennsylvania, where he failed to secure an injunction. At that point, he withdrew that case and refiled the same day in Rhode Island under the state’s antitrust law.
In a world where LSU is actively signing NFL players, giving an injured player one more year at an FCS school feels like the bare minimum the NCAA could accommodate.
Somewhere in the middle of the legal maneuvering, Holland & Knight partner Taylor Askew informed the team that “the poop man cometh once more,” referencing Picard’s intestinal health and senior counsel Natalie Molz turned her attention to the plaintiff’s mother — “Mama Picard really just can’t give up her dreams for baby boy” — and then mused about litigation tactics to make the case “easier for a dumb judge in RI.”
How did these emails see the light of day? It’s a question a lot of people have asked ever since we wrote about it. Well, WPRI explains:
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The email thread was forwarded as part of a message sent to Picard’s attorney, Joseph Carnevale of Providence-based Savage Law Partners LLP, who responded by telling the attorneys he would share the contents with Superior Court Judge Brian Stern, who is assigned to the case.
“Yikes guys… do better,” Carnevale wrote to Cole, calling the email exchange “clearly indicative of the NCAA’s thoughts on all of these things.”
“Feel free to let me know if you need recommendations for accommodations in Providence,” Carnevale added.
Recommendations. 10/10. No notes.
For what it’s worth, the bench in question is Judge Brian Stern. If the theory was that a state trial judge in a small jurisdiction needs analysis pre-chewed and vomited into his mouth like a baby bird, the NCAA drew the wrong judge. Stern has sat on the Rhode Island Superior Court since 2009 and has run its Business Calendar since 2011, meaning he’s spent around fifteen years doing nothing but complex commercial litigation. As you might imagine, Picard’s attorneys weren’t going to let that go:
“The unprofessional language used by the NCAA’s counsel is insulting to us, our client, and the Rhode Island Judiciary. We have the utmost faith and confidence in the Rhode Island Judiciary, which we hold in the highest regard. This case is on the Superior Court Business Calendar and pending before Judge Brian Stern. Judge Stern has served as a Director of the American College of Business Court Judges and has been, along with his colleagues on the Business Calendar, a national thought leader on business law jurisprudence. He and all Rhode Island judges deserve the respect of all who enter their courtrooms, including the NCAA’s attorneys,” said Christopher J. Fragomeni, a partner at Savage Law Partners.
Holland & Knight is apparently still on the Pennsylvania matter, but the NCAA seems to have thought better of sending the firm in front of Judge Stern at this point. So they lit the “Foley-signal,” which is like the Bat-signal but nerdier. Now they’ll take over digging the NCAA out of this hole.
As they say in football, it’s all about bench depth.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.