Donald Sterling is not giving up Los Angeles Clippers easily, new basketball season be damned. A new lawsuit has been filed by Sterling's camp is claiming that Shelly and the National Basketball Association had fraudulently act on his behalf to negotiate a sale of the basketball team to former Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer, Bloomberg reported.
According to the real estate billionaire in his recently filing in the Los Angeles Superior Court, Shelly had deliberately collaborated and colluded with the sports league and NBA commissioner Adam Silver with Ballmer, and that the act was of an extreme and outrageous conduct. Sterling is seeking an order from the court judge to freeze the sale, and is asking for unspecified damages.
The lawsuit follows the ongoing trial presided by a probate judge regarding Shelly's capacity to complete the Clippers sales with Ballmer. In May, Shelly had used two doctors to deem her estranged husband mentally incapacitated to fulfill the role as a co-trustee of the family trust, which somewhat cleared the way initially for her to strike a deal with Ballmer before the NBA forced an auction,
Appointed interim head of the Clipper Dick Parsons said in his testimony yesterday that Ballmer's offer was a price deemed to be higher than the amount the forced sale would be able to get. Parsons added that it would be impossible to get a similar or even higher offer for the price. Parsons also stressed the importance of closing the deal, and warned that players, coaches and sponsors could abandon the team if Sterling retains ownership of the Clippers by the start of the basketball season.
Shelly's lawyer, Pierce O'Donnell, said about Sterling's latest lawsuit, "Donald's latest lawsuit is a frivolous, last ditch act of desperation by a delusional, bitter man. This action shows once more how obsessed he is with ruining a record-setting $2 billion sale of the Los Angeles Clippers -- a sale that would solve the problems his racist rant started three months ago."
