Former LSU women’s basketball coach Pokey Chatman is prepared to take legal action to obtain pay included in her contract with the University.
Chatman may also seek damages for “the manner in which she was treated,” according to the letter released Tuesday afternoon by Chatman’s lawyer Mary Olive Pierson.
Chatman resigned March 7 amid allegations of inappropriate conduct with a former player. The resignation came several weeks after assistant coach Carla Berry reported the alleged inappropriate conduct to University officials.
Chatman and Pierson first made their positions verbally known to the University on April 11 and followed with a five-page letter sent Friday to Ray Lamonica, general counsel for the LSU Systems.
In the letter, Pierson said Assistant Athletic Director Miriam Segar informed Chatman via telephone March 6 that she would “be forced to resign or be fired” the next day.
Chatman then hired Pierson for representation, and Pierson arrived at Lamonica’s office at 9:30 a.m. March 7 to discuss the situation.
“Upon arrival in your office, I advised that I had heard that the University was going to fire Coach Chatman, and I asked how much they were willing to pay for that privilege,” Pierson said in her letter to Lamonica. “Your immediate and firm response was that Chatman would be departing LSU, and that LSU had no intention of paying coach Chatman anything after her departure ,which was obviously imminent.”
Pierson said Lamonica then gave Chatman approximately two hours, or until 12:30 p.m., to resign.
Chatman’s contract was scheduled to end June 30, 2009. According to section 12.a. of Chatman’s contract, the University can terminate the contract without cause but must pay Chatman’s salary for the remaining time of the contract, which would total approximately $800,000.
According to the letter, Lamonica said the reason for the requested resignation stemmed from Berry’s allegations, or “stories,” as Pierson said, about “unspecified and undefined relationships between coach Chatman and former players when coach Chatman was an assistant coach and prior to the date of her contract as a head coach.”
In what she called “unsubstantiated hearsay,” Pierson said Lamonica did not make any attempts to verify the identities of the former players involved.
“You admitted to me that you had not even spoken to anyone who was allegedly involved in those stories, and you were not aware of anyone who had made a complaint to the University,” Pierson wrote to Lamonica.
According to Pierson’s account, Lamonica said Chatman violated an “absolute” University policy forbidding relationships between teachers and students or coaches and athletes, although no such University policy exists. Pierson said it was this repeated false statement that “caused coach Chatman to make her decision to sign the resignation letter.”
Pierson said the termination could not “be deemed voluntary,” and Chatman was not “given the time to carefully consider her options.”
Athletic Director Skip Bertman declined to talk to The Daily Reveille regarding the potential litigation and said through his assistant Wanda Carrier that all questions should be directed to Lamonica.
Lamonica told The Daily Reveille on Tuesday afternoon that he was “going to have a response,” but Lamonica said LSU Systems spokesman Charles Zewe should be contacted for a statement.
When contacted, Zewe said he would not discuss the contents of the letter because he had not yet seen it. Zewe said he planned to release a statement, but as of press time, he had not sent the statement to The Daily Reveille.
—–Contact Amy Brittain at [email protected]