A businessman has withdrawn his motion for a judge’s confirmation of an arbitration award he obtained against former USC running back Reggie Bush in which he alleged he was defamed by the Heisman trophy winner.
Plaintiff Lloyd Lake filed the petition to confirm the award on April 14 with Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Eric Harmon. The amounts Lake won in compensatory and punitive damages are redacted from the plaintiff’s petition. However, Lake’s attorneys filed court papers on Friday withdrawing the motion. No explanation was offered.
Bush, 40, resolved earlier litigation between he and Lake in 2010. Lake contended he provided Bush with cash and other benefits while Bush played for the Trojans in 2004 and 2005. Lake’s initial case alleged breach-of-contract.
Lake, along with his father Roy Gunner, now 84, and mother Barbara Gunner, now 82, then sued Bush again in Van Nuys Superior Court in February 2023, this time for defamation. Bush filed a motion to compel arbitration of the second suit, abiding by what he said were the terms of the accord in the first suit requiring that an arbitrator and not a jury decide any future claims.
Judge Valerie Salkin approved the motion to compel arbitration in June 2023, but ruled that Lake’s parents’ part of the case will go before a jury. On April 12, arbitrator Jeffrey G. Benz found that Lake was entitled to compensatory and punitive damages from Bush for breach of contract and defamation.
However, the amounts awarded are redacted in both the petition to confirm the award as well Benz’s decision itself.
The second suit alleges Bush defamed Lake and the Gunners with remarks he made on YouTube in September 2022 and on Twitter three months later. In the YouTube interview, Bush allegedly said, among other things, that Lake was trying to blackmail him and that Lake had a police record as long as a Cheesecake Factory menu. Both statements are untrue, according to the plaintiffs’ attorneys’ court papers.
On Twitter, Bush allegedly referred to Lake as a “convicted felon who was in prison for rape,” an allegation the plaintiffs’ attorneys state in their court papers was “false and without any substance.”
Lake and the Gunners have suffered severe emotional distress and financial harm, the second suit states. On May 21, Harmon will hear Bush’s motion to dismiss the Lake parents’ part of the case on free-speech grounds.
In addition to winning the 2005 Heisman Trophy, Bush also won the 2005 Doak Walker and Walter Camp awards.