Staphane Vanel and Kami Rahbaran have filed a lawsuit against Manny Pacquiao and several others associated with the boxer in regards to the recent match against Floyd Mayweather Jr. The suit is seeking roughly $5 million in damages by the two plaintiffs based on the shoulder injury Pacquiao sustained in training previous to the fight. Later in the day courts were ablaze from California to Texas with various other suits including several class-action lawsuits – all materially claiming the same things.
In the first lawsuit, Rahbaran and Vanel are claiming that the boxer should have disclosed that he had a shoulder injury. The two are claiming that they were defrauded after having paid to watch the fight. They are seeking to be reimbursed and have opened the suit as a potential class action as well to anyone who may want to be reimbursed, such as with ticket purchases, betting or pay-per-view charges.
The suit was filed in Las Vegas federal court and comes just days after regulators of Nevada boxing began to look into possible disciplinary action against the fighter for not disclosing that he had an injury to his shoulder during his training. Pacquiao lost the fight after a unanimous vote and now is preparing for surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff.
The Nevada Athletic Commission are particularly curious as to why Pacquiao choose the NO section of his state form when asked if he was subject to a shoulder injury.
Following in the footsteps of Floyd Mayweather’s win and impending nine-digit prize, the mother of three of his children filed a defamation suit in relation to an April interview he fielded with Yahoo News anchor Katie Couric. In the interview Mayweather allegedly told Yahoo, “Did I restrain a woman that was on drugs? Yes I did. So if they say that it’s domestic violence, then you know what, I’m guilty of restraining a person.”
Harris’ lawsuit claims that, “The statements by Mayweather during the Couric interview were totally and unequivocally false and defamatory,” and “The true facts are Harris was not a drug-abuser or drug-addict.”
Harris is seeking $20 million, although in California a jury would decide the amount of damages.