Expect to see Lance Armstrong in suit and tie this fall if his case goes to arbitration(Image credit: AFP Photo)
Johan Bruyneel and Lance Armstrong in the good old days(Image credit: AFP Photo)
Oprah Winfrey's interview with Lance Armstrong will air this week(Image credit: AFP Photo)
An arbitration panel has issued Lance Armstrong a subpeonas to provide videotaped testimony under oath about his use of banned drugs during his career as a professional cyclist. The panel has requested Amrstrong’s testimony on June 12 along with testimony from his longtime business manager Bill Stapleton on June 9.
Texas-based SCA Promotions, sued Armstrong to try and recover roughly $12 million in bonuses that it paid out during the athlete’s seven Tour de France wins. Armstrong avoided testifying under oath in March when his attorneys secured a temporary delay through an appeals court.
Armstrong’s attorneys have now requested that the Texas Supreme Court intervene, stating that the previous case with SCA Promotions was binding and cannot be reopened. In 2006, the Texas company lost a case against Armstrong when it tried to withhold his bonus payments because it believed he was using performance-enhancing drugs to win the Tour de France titles. In the end, SCA Promotions was forced to pay the bonuses.
Armstrong declined to comment on the case when contacted by Cyclingnews.
In January 2013, Armstrong confessed to using performance-enhancing substances in a one-on-one televised interview with Oprah Winfrey. He confessed to using banned drugs during his Tour de France wins from 1999-2005, proof that he lied in the original case with SCA Promotions.
Armstrong was stripped of his Tour de France titles following the US Anti-Doping Agency’s Reasoned Decision that pointed to him being the leader of a longtime doping scandal.
Last November and for the first time, Armstrong provided written testimony that named people who had knowledge of or who were involved in his doping practices for a separate lawsuit.
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USA Today reported in April that it had obtained a file that contained Armstrong’s answers to 16 questions after it was filed in a federal court by Floyd Landis’s attorney in the federal whistleblower lawsuit. Armstrong’s testimony was originally to be used in a lawsuit filed against him by Acceptance Insurance, however, that case ended when an undiscolsed settlement was reached.
The people he named in that testimony to having provided him with performance-enhancing drugs were Pepi Marti, Dr Pedro Celaya, Dr Luis Garcia del Moral and Dr Michele Ferrari. He also stated that masseuse Emma O'Reilly, bike mechanic Julien de Vriese and Philippe Maire, also known as “Motoman,” helped to deliver the drugs.
