[UPDATED at 5:33 p.m.: As of this morning, Nelson’s suit against Time, Inc. and George Dohrmann has been filed.]
Nearly two months after a Sports Illustrated story painted him in a negative light, former UCLA men’s basketball player Reeves Nelson plans to file suit against the magazine.
The suit, to be filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court Wednesday, names Sports Illustrated’s parent company Time Inc. and writer George Dohrmann as defendants. Nelson’s complaint alleges defamation, false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress after Dohrmann wrote an expose on the UCLA basketball program titled “Not the UCLA Way.”
Nelson is being represented by Keith Fink, an attorney who teaches in the communication studies department at UCLA, and is suing the magazine and Dohrmann for $10 million.
The expose depicted Nelson as abusive toward teammates and accused Nelson of intentionally causing physical harm to them. Nelson was also said to have urinated on a pile of teammate Tyler Honeycutt’s clothing and bed.
The suit includes sworn declarations from 18 current and former UCLA basketball players, including Honeycutt, denying various allegations in Dohrmann’s account of why the Bruins fell from the upper ranks of college basketball following UCLA’s last Final Four appearance in 2008.
The day the story was released, Fink sent a letter to Sports Illustrated’s editor in chief on behalf of Nelson demanding a retraction. Time Inc. and Sports Illustrated responded with a statement saying they “unequivocally stand behind George Dohrmann’s story, ‘Not the UCLA Way.’”
Compiled by Chris Nguyen, Bruin Sports senior staff.