Welcome to another Year End review. 2020 has been a unique year and its clear that the biggest business news story of the year in MMA was the pandemic.
Notwithstanding this, there were other news stories that happened in 2020. MPO will take a look at these as we wind down 2020.
Lyman Good’s nutritional supplement lawsuit was dismissed earlier this year. You might recall that Good filed a lawsuit against a nutritional supplement company and distributor. He claimed that Anavite, was tainted. But the company posed an opposition.
Good filed a lawsuit to contend that a nutritional supplement that he took caused him to failed a USADA drug test and he lost out on a fight due to this. Unfortunate for Good, legal documents revealed his income.
Also unfortunate for Good, he had a bad case. One of the key reasons was the fact that he did not provide admissible evidence in support of his claim that the supplement, Anavite, he ingested was tainted with a banned substance. The court determined that a lab report which tested Anavite for a tainted supplement was inadmissible for purposes of trial. Good’s attorney argued that the lab report would be admissible under the evidentiary rule of a ‘business records exception’ which allows evidence that is kept in the normal course of business. But due to the technical nature of this evidence Good did not have a witness to verify the information.
Its also worthy to note that Good was one of the first fighters to contract COVID-19.
Good’s legal strategy in this case was not the best. One might infer that this might be due to the lack of economic resources to pay for an expert, it could also be due to the lack of knowledge of proving a products liability case.
Ay dios mio… https://t.co/kJ8yf5XrHY pic.twitter.com/v2Oah56qL5
— Jason Cruz (@dilletaunt) January 7, 2020
The Court notes that instead of a witness to testify to the report, it could have supplied a certification per the court rules. Yet, it did not do so.
Yoel Romero won a huge judgment from a court against a nutritional supplement maker which made one wonder whether this lawsuit was similar in nature. It appeared that this lawsuit was done with the expectation that there would not be much of a defense. Unfortunately for Good, the defense was quite vigilant in determining whether or not the alleged tainted supplement was valid. Thus, this lawsuit was determined on evidentiary grounds. The fact Good did not have any, was problematic.
It’s also worthy to note that the inability for Good to retain the bottle that was claimed to have been tainted did not help his case. He also didn’t list Anavite on his USADA declaration.
It was not the best of years for Good as he was one of the first fighters to contract COVID-19.
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