Should Lance Armstrong Sue His Lawyers?

There were lawsuits against Lance Armstrong before he went on Oprah, but more after. Reported to be worth over 125 million dollars it is a good bet that Armstrong consulted with his lawyers and PR consultants about what he would and would not admit to on television.

Connecticut does not allow the jury to hear an admission by the party being sued with one major exception. If a lawyer says I am sorry I screwed up it goes into evidence. If a driver of a car who causes an accident says he was drunk it goes into evidence. But if a doctor says sorry I amputated the wrong leg it does not go into evidence. The doctors and hospitals got our legislature to bar evidence of apologies or admissions by doctors because they have long known that patients who feel loved and taken care of or at least if they feel the doc was straight with them are more likely to forgive and forget. So was it the PR advisors or the lawyers who told Armstrong to come clean to avoid being sued. I doubt it. It is hard to believe that they thought these big corporations and the US government would not sue. The suits have been reported to claim 100 million dollars. Showing some love would not be enough.

Did Armstrong's lawyers intend to influence the jurors? If you believe as I do that the tide of public opinion had turned overwhelmingly towards a belief that Armstrong was a liar, then I would not be surprised if the lawyers were thinking long term. Big cases often include focus groups. We use them, see our article "Let Them Mock You". I wouldn't be surprised if the lawyers told Armstrong he had to do something to sway public opinion. He had already done the non-profit thing and he had the sympathy of surviving cancer, short of single handed rescue of many children and pets from a burning building or rescuing a score of people from a flood of epic proportions, what could he do but admit what he had done. Oddly I didn't hear a true "I am sorry", nor did I hear "I shamed myself, my sport and all those that I cared for.." But maybe that was too much to expect even if it could have been a shot at trying to garner favor with those who may later get to judge him.

Lets go forward in time, imagine that Armstrong is on the witness stand and is being pounded by the lawyer for the US government pointing to the clause in the contract Armstrong signed where he promised he would not do anything to shame the good name of the Postal Service (I am assuming the contract was very clear). The lawyer drives home the point that Armstrong denied for years what he later admitted on Oprah; that he cheated. Armstrong may be wondering, if his lawyers advised him to come clean on Oprah, why he listened to them. To answer the question of whether Armstrong should sue his lawyer if the lawyer told him to come clean; my answer is a simple no way. Who is going to think Armstrong was wronged by a lawyer; there is a bad lawyer joke in comparing Armstrong and a lawyer. Who knows how things would have turned out if people perceived Armstrong as truly repentant? Can Armstrong really show he was damaged by telling the truth, a necessary element of a Malpractice claim? Is a jury really going to want to side with the cheater over the lawyer?