The civil defamation trial launched by Dr. Christopher Amann against Phil Brooks a.k.a. CM Punk and Scott Colton a.k.a. Colt Cabana began Tuesday in the Cook County Courthouse in Illinois.
It is a jury trial with Judge Elizabeth Budzinski presiding over the case.
Gregory Pratt of the Chicago Tribune observed a portion of the trial (he was in the courthouse for other business and isn’t covering the trial).
[wp_ad_camp_1]
According to Pratt’s notes, the jury listened to the “Art of Wrestling” podcast interview that Cabana conducted with Punk that was released on Thanksgiving 2014. The day’s proceedings also featured Amann testifying on his behalf with evidence of published reports covering the interview, as well as tweets calling for Amann to be fired by the WWE after the accusation levied by Punk in the interview regarding the lack of adequate treatment he received while with the company.
The trial will continue throughout the week with Cabana announcing he will be unable to appear for Compound Wrestling this Friday because of the trial but is still scheduled for the Ring of Honor event on Saturday at the Manhattan Center.
The lawsuit was filed back in 2015 and it is amazing it has lasted this long. Even more surprising is the timing, given that Punk is scheduled to fight at UFC 225 on Saturday, June 8th and this week would theoretically be his last week of hard training and it seems he will be in court all day throughout this week with no guarantee of how long the trial will last.
3 years does seem like a long time but I believe many trials take a while to proceed I court from the time suit is filed. (Even here in Canada.) Overburdened legal system in the US, I guess.
We’ve only heard one side so far (and I remember the AOW podcast well) so I will try to keep up with this one.
Colt isn’t going to be found liable, WWE is just fucking with him to send a signal to other podcasters. Even if Dr Amman loses then Colt still loses because he’s spent half a million on lawyers.
People will think twice if they air accusatory stories without preferencing the statements not reflecting this platforms views.
And no countersuit…This will most likely get settled.
I like Deezy said, think Colt is mainly involved as they’re sending a message. It could also be because he gave the platform for the claims to be told.
What people Don’t seem to understand is that WWE Don’t have anything to do with the lawsuit, this is all Chris Amann doing and He’s not using wwe lawyer but is own layer.
Having said that WWE might be giving money to amann money to help him out with is expense and if this is the case then it will be a hard case for punk to win.
Amann though that colt had is part in all of this and that’s why he got rope into this which is a shame because i’ve remember listening to the interview and colt did nothing out of the ordinary to deserve this but in amann eye’s he did. Anyway this is a case that I will be following really closely and what I’m hoping is that somehow, they are able to reach some sort of plea barging or something where both party could win.
Makes perfect sense. It’s probably the reason why Colt kept on telling Kevin Matthews to say allegedly, when talking about Matthews’ stint at Deep South and his problems with Bill DeMott.