CHICAGO (Legal Newsline) - A famous former volleyball coach who defeated a class action by parents who claimed he hid prior allegations of sexual abuse must pay $21,000 in sanctions for improperly contacting potential class members and urging them to opt out of the suit.
The sanctions upheld by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals represent a partial victory for lawyers in a case which an earlier Seventh Circuit panel dismissed as a “fade-out after the fashion of the Cheshire Cat” after a judge found the plaintiffs already knew about the allegations they claimed to have been hidden.
Laura Mullen sued Rick Butler and his GLV volleyball training business in 2018, claiming they fraudulently withheld information about allegations Butler had sexual intercourse with at least three underage girls he was training in the 1980s. The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services found the allegations truthful in 1995 and in 2018, USA Volleyball banned Butler from participating in the sport for life.
Mullen and her lawyers at Edelson PC succeeded in having the case certified in 2019 as a class action on behalf of anyone who paid for instruction at Butler’s Sports Performance clinics. As parents began contacting GLV, the Butlers and employees responded by urging them to exercise their right to opt out of the case.
Troy Gilb, GLV’s Vice President of Operations, told one parent who opted out: “Thank you very much for the show of support!! We all know what is going on with the lawsuit and I hope that with enough voices of support that this whole thing will be thrown out!” He then forwarded the email to other class members as well as to GLV’s lawyer, Danielle D’Ambrose. The Butlers also urged class members to opt out.
Mullen’s lawyers complained the emails to the judge overseeing the case and at a hearing D’Ambrose denied her clients were communicating with class members. “Every e-mail I’ve seen them respond with is, I’m very sorry, I can’t talk about this right now, you know, thank you, something along those lines,” D’Ambrose said.
Before the next hearing, the judge asked D’Ambrose if she wanted to correct her statement. She said she received some of the emails but “did not see” the improper ones. In October 2022, the court ordered $20,998 in sanctions against the defendants for violating Rule 4.2, which prohibits attorneys from directly contacting parties in litigation.
In the meantime, the trial judge dismissed the case and decertified the class, finding Mullen was an inappropriate class representative and her fraud allegations were belied by the widespread publicity Butler’s sexual history had already received.
Mullen appealed and Seventh Circuit Judge Frank Easterbrook, in a peppery 2022 opinion, upheld the dismissal. “She lost because the judge concluded that she had not been injured—which made her a bad representative to boot,” Judge Easterbrook wrote.
The sanctions order lived on, however, until a different panel upheld it in a Feb. 5 decision by Judge Michael Brennan. The Butlers clearly violated rules against contacting class members, the court said, and the sanctions reflected a realistic estimate of the legal costs involved.
The Butlers also sought sanctions against Mullen and her attorneys, claiming they improperly used the term “rape” in the complaint, made false accusations and the Mullens enrolled one of their daughters in the program after they filed the lawsuit, contradicting their claim of being misled by GLV.
The court rejected all their arguments, agreeing with the trial judge that “claims of inaccuracy are not a basis to impose sanctions.”