Legal News

Fore! Andrew Giuliani Swings Away, Sues Duke Golf Team

By Dan Slater

Andrew Giuliani speaks with Tiger Woods at the Westchester Country Club during the 2001 Buick Classic. Woods played with Andrew during the Pro-Am tournament. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

A Loyal Reader has alerted us to the following lawsuit: Rudy Giuliani’s son, Andrew, has been kicked off the Duke University golf team and is suing to get back on. The 22-year-old aspiring pro golfer claims in a federal suit that Duke’s new golf coach trumped up a series of allegations to force him out and turn his classmates against him. Here’s the scoop from Newsday; and here’s the complaint.

“I want to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else at Duke,” young Andrew reportedly said in a press release that thanked his mother and stepdad but not his father. His mother, Donna Hanover, reportedly called the incident “heartbreaking.”

Andrew Giuliani was recruited to Duke by former coach Rod Myers, who died last year. UCLA’s Daniel “O.D.” Vincent III was brought in to replace Myers, and Giuliani contends he was on a mission to shrink the size of the team.

Rudolph Giuliani, center, and children Caroline, left, and Andrew, at Gracie Mansion for Giuliani’s wedding, May 24, 2003.(AP Photo/Diane Bondareff)

They claim Vincent suspended the junior for a series of minor or fabricated infractions: driving too fast out of a parking lot, breaking a driving wood and getting into a confrontation with a teammate. Then the coach allegedly told Giuliani the suspension would be lifted only if all 12 of his teammates lobbied for him - a scheme the suit likened to “Lord of the Flies.”

On Feb. 11, 2008, the suit says, Vincent announced that Giuliani would not be on the team.

“Andrew and his teammates were shocked,” the suit says. “Andrew had no prior notice of what was about to happen. At no time was Andrew ever given an opportunity to defend himself.”

The suit claims that incidents of misconduct that Vincent cited in his reasons for expelling Giuliani were not appropriate reasons for expulsion, such as:

• On Feb. 2 Giuliani flipped his putter a few feet to his golf bag.
• On Feb. 3, Giuliani leaned over his driver and it broke, and “in O.D. Vincent’s telling, this became ‘throwing and breaking’ a club.”
• On Feb. 3, Giuliani walked ahead of his playing partner at Treyburn Golf Course and later that day “gunned the engine” of his car and “drove fast while leaving the golf course parking lot.”
• On Feb. 4, during a golf-team football game, “Andrew played harder than some of the other boys wanted to play.”
• On Feb. 10, while Giuliani was eating an apple, a teammate twice hit the golfer’s hand and knocked the fruit to the ground. After that same teammate “slammed a door hitting Andrew’s face,” Giuliani “tossed the apple at a teammate, glancing off the side of his face.”

Young Andrew is being repped by Bob Ekstrand, of Ekstrand & Ekstrand. Duke spokesman Keith Lawrence said the university had no immediate comment.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 24, 2008 (boomark / email).