Duke Wins Suit With Devilish Argument

If Duke's football team isn't good, then its lawyers certainly are.

After Louisville sued Duke for $450,000 for backing out of a four-game football contract with three games left, Duke's lawyers capitalized on a clause in the contract that stated Duke was responsible for finding a "team of similar stature," or else. The argument in a Franklin, Ky. Circuit Court? "The Blue Devils...were so bad that any team would be a suitable replacement," according to this news report from the Courier-Journal.

An excerpt from Judge Philip J. Shepherd's summary:

“At oral argument, Duke (with a candor perhaps more attributable to good legal strategy than to institutional modesty) persuasively asserted that this is a threshold that could not be any lower. Duke’s argument on this point cannot be reasonably disputed by Louisville.”

Seems like Duke has scored the first victory of the David Cutcliffe Era.

—by Ben Cohen