Expert: Kings handled Luke Walton allegations by the book, avoiding messy trial
The Kings were already moving forward with coach Luke Walton. Now they can move on completely, confident whatever causes them to rise or fall will play out on the basketball court and not in court.
Kelli Tennant, the former Southern California sportscaster who filed a civil lawsuit accusing Walton of sexual assault, asked a judge to dismiss her case Tuesday. The case was dismissed “with prejudice,” according to court records, meaning Tennant cannot re-file her claim against Walton.
The civil lawsuit against Walton could have taken years to wend its way through the busy Los Angeles court system, leaving a cloud of suspicion over the Kings organization and a potentially messy jury trial looming in the distance. Walton was represented by Mark Baute, the same attorney who helped NBA star Derrick Rose and two other men get acquitted of rape charges in 2016, telling the jury the victim welcomed her alleged assailants into bed with “open arms and open legs.”
This case was not as salacious, but it still could have gotten ugly. Instead, it ended quickly and quietly, with only a brief and restrained response from Baute.
“I can confirm we received the dismissal and it’s nice to see that it was voluntarily and permanently dismissed by the claimant,” Baute said in an email to The Sacramento Bee.
Baute would not say whether the two sides had reached a settlement. Garo Mardirossian, Tennant’s attorney, could not be reached.
Michael Robbins, president of EXTTI Inc., and one of California’s leading workplace investigation experts, said the Kings have handled this situation by the book since the allegations surfaced in April, a week after Walton was hired. They promptly released a statement saying they were taking the allegations “very seriously” and worked with the NBA to launch an independent investigation, commissioning Sacramento attorneys Sue Ann Van Dermyden and Jennifer Doughty to lead the inquisition.
“It seems to me they did exactly the right thing,” Robbins said. “Because they took it seriously, and the evidence of them taking it seriously is doing an investigation, hiring someone who is an independent investigator with a good reputation to do a good investigation, and, as far as I can tell, it was a good and thorough investigation. That’s exactly what an employer should do.”
The four-month investigation found insufficient evidence to support claims made by Tennant, who alleged Walton sexually assaulted her in a Santa Monica hotel room when he was an assistant coach with the Golden State Warriors in 2014. Tennant also said Walton sexually harassed her in 2017, when he was coaching the Los Angeles Lakers and she was working for Spectrum SportsNet.
Investigators said they interviewed more than 20 people, including friends and former colleagues of Tennant and Walton. Tennant wasn’t one of them. She declined to cooperate with investigators.
Robbins said the findings of that investigation might have made it difficult for Tennant to proceed with her lawsuit, prompting her to settle or simply drop her lawsuit.
“Obviously, I don’t know exactly why she’s dismissing her case,” Robbins said. “But I can say it’s fairly common, if the company or employer does an investigation and it is a good, quality investigation, and if the investigators determine it is more likely the allegations are not true, then what happens is the investigation results get turned over to the other side.
“And then the attorney on the other side is in a bit of a quandary, because if they know the investigators have done a good investigation, they know they’re going to have a problem because the investigation results will come out during trial. The jury will see that this was a good investigation and the attorney is fighting that investigation throughout the trial.”
