Marist Sues JMU’s Brady

The following are two news stories about Marist’s suit of Matt Brady for violating his contract by recruiting players to James Madison who initially committed to Marist. The first story is about the suit itself and the second story is a defense of the suit by Marist’s athletic director

Marist Sues JMU’s Brady

HARRISONBURG – Matt Brady ‘s first recruiting class helped him break James Madison’s string of losing seasons. Now, it has him embroiled in a lawsuit.

Marist College confirmed Thursday that it has filed a lawsuit seeking monetary damages from the Dukes’ second-year basketball coach, claiming he violated his contract by luring players to JMU whom he previously recruited at Marist.

The Poughkeepsie, N.Y., school – which included James Madison and the state of Virginia as defendants in the suit – also said Brady breached his contract by not relinquishing all his Marist records and files after accepting the JMU job in March 2008.

The lawsuit was filed July 7 with the Supreme Court of New York – that state’s equivalent of a district or circuit court – in Dutchess County, where Marist is located. It was first reported by the Poughkeepsie Journal on Wednesday.

JMU was served with the summons this week, Marist lawyer Paul Sullivan said, and has 30 days to respond. Sullivan did not know the precise day JMU received the summons.

In an attempt to avoid a lawsuit, Sullivan said, Marist began trying to discuss its concerns with Brady and JMU officials shortly after Madison hired the 43-year-old coach. According to Marist spokesman Tim Massie, no one at JMU ever addressed its concerns.

Hoping to spur JMU into discussions, Sullivan said, Marist served notice of litigation seven to eight months ago. Massie said Marist would have preferred not to sue Madison or Brady .

“We gave Coach Brady and JMU ample opportunity to respond to our invitation to talk about this,” Massie said Thursday. “Nothing’s been done. By law in the commonwealth of Virginia, we have to provide six-months-prior notices of pending litigation [because JMU is a state school]. We hoped that this would lead Coach Brady and JMU to sit down with us.

“Again, there has been no communication by Matt or JMU. Had there at least been some effort to meet our requests for reasonable negotiations, we would not have brought this lawsuit.”

Even now, Massie said, the school would rather settle the suit before a trial.

“We still hope to not go to court,” he said. “Our hope here is to have all parties sit down and talk about a reasonable settlement.”

JMU spokesman Don Egle said the university would have no comment.

“We have historically not made statements involving pending litigation,” Egle said.

Brady said he could not respond to any questions regarding the lawsuit.

“I’m not allowed to have any comment,” he said.

Likewise, James Madison athletic director Jeff Bourne declined to comment.

“I can’t really talk to you about it,” Bourne said. “That’s an issue you’ll have to talk to Don Egle about. Any comments will come from him.”

Marist did not specify how much money it is seeking.

Brady began coaching at Marist in 2004 and signed a contract extension on July 1, 2007, which was to expire on March 31, 2011.

According to the lawsuit, Brady ‘s contract stated that he would need written permission from Marist to get out of the pact, and if the contract were terminated for any reason, Brady agreed to “1) turn over all basketball program records and files, 2) end any and all contact with all Marist basketball program recruits and 3) not offer a scholarship to any current Marist basketball players or to any persons that he or his staff recruited to play basketball at Marist.”

The lawsuit also describes the communication Marist had with JMU in March 2008 when the Dukes were interested in hiring Brady as the replacement for departed coach Dean Keener.

The lawsuit said Marist athletic director Tim Murray told Bourne on March 20, 2008, there was no buyout in Brady ‘s contract, but that Marist would grant him permission to leave if he agreed to “have no contact with or solicitation of current Marist men’s basketball players and all Marist men’s basketball recruits.”

On March 25, 2008, JMU announced it had hired Brady , and, according to the lawsuit, Murray sent a letter to Bourne on April 10 reminding him of Brady ‘s obligations and listing the players Brady had recruited at Marist.

Massie and Sullivan also said Marist President Dennis J. Murray sent a letter to JMU President Linwood H. Rose, although the letter was not mentioned in the lawsuit.

The Daily News-Record filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the letter in May 2008, but the university rejected the request because it “contains personal information maintained in personnel records concerning an employee of JMU.”

Until this week, both Marist and JMU had consistently refused to comment on a potential lawsuit.

According to Marist, Brady wasted no time contacting recruits.

After Marist agreed to let Brady out of his contract, the lawsuit claims, Brady “immediately and without the knowledge of Marist, contacted Marist’s basketball recruits in an attempt to then direct those recruits to the James Madison men’s basketball program.”

Brady signed forward Julius Wells, who had previously signed a letter of intent with Marist but was granted his release. He also signed forward Andrey Semenov and center Trevon Flores, who had committed orally to Marist.

Point guard Devon Moore never agreed to go to Marist, but Brady was recruiting him when he was with the Red Foxes. He also signed with Madison.

Flores deferred enrollment and did not play for the Dukes last season, but Wells and Moore were both named to the Colonial Athletic Association All-Rookie team, with Wells being named CAA Rookie of the Year. Semenov also helped the Dukes finish with a 21-15 record, breaking a string of eight straight losing seasons.

The lawsuit said that Marist believes players have a right to attend whatever school they choose, but that it’s also the responsibility of coaches to abide by their contracts.

“It isn’t about the kids,” Sullivan said. “The institutions and the coach were bound by a contract.”

Tim Murray, the Marist athletic director, said the no-recruiting clause is in every contract the school has with a coach.

“It’s important to protect your program,” Murray said.

Murray refused to say whether Brady raised questions about the clause while negotiating his contract at Marist. He also said Brady gave no indication when he left the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference school that he intended to continue wooing Marist recruits.

Murray said he isn’t certain how he initially learned that Brady recruited the players.

“I was very, very disappointed,” he said.

Brady signed a five-year contract with JMU with a guaranteed annual salary of $290,000. With bonuses, Brady could receive up to $490,000 a year.

Sour Grapes? Marist AD Defends Lawsuit

HARRISONBURG – Tim Murray knows there might be people who call Marist College’s lawsuit against former men’s basketball coach Matt Brady sour grapes, that they might wonder why the school’s athletic director would write a clause in a coach’s contract that would limit the college options of high school seniors, and that future coaches might not be thrilled about working for him if they know such a clause will be enforced.

But the Marist athletic director says he isn’t concerned. He said it’s a simple case of enforcing the terms of the contract.

“If someone thinks it hurts my image to make sure someone honors a contract, then so be it,” Murray said by phone Friday. “… If I’m less attractive to those that can’t honor a contract, then I’m fine with that, and so is Marist. If a coach doesn’t want to sign it because he doesn’t think he agrees with it, that’s fine. He’s not the coach that we need in our program.”

If the seven-page lawsuit filing, which claims that Brady violated his contract at Marist by luring players to JMU that he’d recruited to join the Red Foxes, doesn’t prove that the school is serious, it’s apparent in Murray’s public statements.

Not many schools have a clause like Marist put in Brady ‘s, but Murray suggested that perhaps they should. Several James Madison boosters interviewed Friday pointed out that coach John Calipari left Memphis this offseason and took a loaded class of recruits to Kentucky with them without much of a fight. Murray suggested that it shouldn’t have been so easy.

“Would Memphis be a different program if it had that clause in his contract?” Murray asked. “It would be interesting.

Marist’s central point, though, is that, regardless of the clause’s fairness, Brady willingly signed a pact and ignored its conditions once he moved on.

“The point was that, we honored our contract with Mr. Brady and we just expected that that contract would be honored on his side as well,” Murray said. “….That clause is in our contact to protect our program in the event of transition. It’s in there for a reason. If we’re not going to enforce that contract, then why have a contract at all?”

But there is a little more to it than that. For one thing, Murray said he felt personally disappointed that Brady allegedly violated the contract.

The A.D. said he believed he had a good working relationship with the coach, and that he was stunned to learn that he was bringing Marist recruits to Madison. JMU forward Julius Wells had signed a letter of intent with Marist before seeking and being granted his release. Forward Andrey Semenov and center Trevon Flores had made oral commitments, and point guard Devon Moore, who had not yet selected a school, he was being recruited by Marist.

Brady again declined comment on Friday. Athletic director Jeff Bourne did not return a call seeking comment.

“It was just at that point to me it was out of character for Matt ,” Murray said. “I was just kind of dumbfounded.”

There was apparently some resentment among the school’s fans who believed Brady had left Marist for a lateral move, which by some was considered more insulting because he’d just signed a contract extension that would have kept him at Marist until 2011. The Colonial Athletic Association and the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, Marist’s league, typically have similar profiles and some fans, as evidenced by their reactions on message boards, believed it was a slap in the face.

“I think the frustration was that … some of the positions he was looking at were not ones that were at higher level conferences,” Murray said.

And the move certainly didn’t help Marist keep the program at the level to which Brady had built it. Under first-year coach Chuck Martin, the Red Foxes finished 10-23 this season, and dead-last in the 10-team MAAC at 4-14 in the conference. That, Murray said, was in large part because Martin had too many scholarships to fill when he took the job and too little time.

“There were seven scholarships available for Chuck when he started in April,” Murray said. “We had one returning starter, so obviously, the way the recruiting process has been pushed up so much more so in the men’s game than the women’s game, yeah, it’s really difficult. … Who’s going to be out there to fill seven scholarships that late?”

All of that gave Murray and Marist reason to believe that they had cause to seek damages. The suit, filed July 7 in New York, seeks unspecified damages. They have said they wouldn’t be seeking those in court had they heard anything from Madison.

“I think we’ve been extremely patient,” Murray said. “We’ve done our best to try to have these things resolved. We still would like to resolve it, frankly. After the time we’ve given this, we felt that it was the time to move forward.”