Should Decory Bryant's Sports Lawyer Appeal?
When a judge in Athens-Clarke County dismissed the sports lawsuit brought by former Georgia Bulldog Decory Bryant, the matter was mostly decided on what laypersons might describe as a technicality.
The court ruled that the Georgia Athletic Association is an arm of the state and therefore entitled to protection under the sovereign immunity doctrine. At first glance, this seems like a reasonable ruling, right? Bryant sued his athletic department for failing to procure insurance, and the court ruled that the athletic department is a government entity, and therefore protected from certain types of lawsuits.
Further investigation reveals that it is not quite this simple. The GAA is a non-profit organization. This means that it is not a division of the University of Georgia in the way that, for example, the school’s physics department might be fully encompassed within the institution.
Universities generally form non-profits such as the GAA so that they can evade the usual restrictions faced by public institutions. For instance, in some states, government employees have their salaries restricted by statute. The way to get around that restriction for coaches is to make the coaches employed by the non-profit, and not the state institution.
This means that the GAA is trying to have it both ways. They want to be a separate entity from the University of Georgia with the protections of a private non-profit, but they also want sovereign immunity, which is only available to government entities. It sounds to me like Decory Bryant’s lawyers will be appealing to a higher authority.
