ike wrote:
If you agree to build me a house for $300k and the contract specifies that no drug users will be in the construction crew and you build me a great house and I discover later that there was a doper on the crew, what do you owe me? Do I get the house for free? That is crazy. My injury is nowhere close to the full contract price. Same with Lance. Only a tiny fraction of the USPS money was used for dope. The rest was used to go cycling, exactly what USPS contracted for. There is a reasonable argument for returning the money used in doping. There is no reasonable argument to return the whole thing. USPS is not entitled to the free labor of the cycling team for all those years. It got the benefit of that bargain and should not now be asking for all the money back.
The law is complex, but this is not.
You dont know how much money was used to dope, and neither do I. We do know that lance had guys on the team not take bonuses so they could buy more drugs. So, if they were not paying several bonuses per year how much of that was USPS money? USPS money was supposed to be the primary source of rider salary. the feds have a lot of those financials, not all of them, of course because you dont write "drug deal" in your budget when you go buy drugs. But we know salary/bonus money was being diverted to drugs.
Im not saying USPS will get full value back, Im saying there are reasons contracts include morals clauses in sports. Dont be surprised if he has to settle most of these lawsuits for a lot more than youre expecting. Did USPS get a lot of good back then? Well now they're getting a hell of a lot of bad. You rarely hear just Lance armstrong, you hear Lance Armstrong and his postal service team.