Past Strategy
Armstrong has sued those he felt lied or otherwise wronged him in the past, and he'll have to re-examine whether that's a sound strategy now, said Marc Mukasey, a partner with Bracewell & Giuliani LLP's White Collar Criminal Defense and Special Investigations practice in New York.
"I imagine that the legal fees are going to cost him a pretty penny," Mukasey said in a telephone interview. "Virtually anybody who ever paid him anything, certainly with some sort of moral turpitude clause in it, is going to try to recoup. I would guess that he will be in contractual litigation for a long time."
Armstrong has denied ever doping and says he's never failed a drug test. Any acknowledgement of drug use now is complicated by the fact that in the original SCA dispute he testified under oath that he had never doped.
Boxed-In
"To say under oath that you never used performance-enhancing drugs, that makes a subsequent admission and apology that much more difficult," said Mukasey, who has no involvement in Armstrong's legal representation. "From a legal perspective, once you box yourself in like that, you better be committed to that story or have a really good excuse as to why you were mistaken or delusional at the time you gave that answer."
While there remain people who believe Armstrong is innocent, it won't mean a return to sponsorships, said Paul Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon.
"I see him as tainted goods," Swangard said last week in a telephone interview. "There are plenty of ways to reach your target consumer and Lance just isn't one of them anymore."