OT - HS player sues coach on Judge Judy!

[Mark Padgett]

Was watching a Judge Judy episode this afternoon. A HS traveling team player was suing his coach for stealing his ipod! The coach was counter suing the kid and his mom for harassment for disrupting a team practice. I didn't get to see the very end but here's the story.

The coach has a traveling neighborhood team in Bakersfield, CA. They were going to a tournament in Vegas during the summer. The coach drove the players there in a van. The kid couldn't find his ipod and thought one of the other players stole it. He felt that was justification for him to steal $20 out of the wallet of another player. The other player knew this happened and told the coach, who gave that player $20 out of his own pocket. He then told the first player that he was sure the ipod was still in the van and that he was going to look for it. If he found it, he would keep it since he reasoned he "bought" it for the $20 he gave to the other player. The coach searched the van and found it. He told the kid he was going to keep it.

When they got back to CA, the coach went to the kid's father (who was a friend of his) and offered to return the ipod. The father declined to accept it because he suspected his son stole it in the first place and he didn't want anything to do with it. The kid, his custodial mother and her boyfriend then went to a practice (the kid had quit the team after all this) and demanded the return of the ipod. The coach said he had already sold it on ebay.

The next step was court. The coach's defense was that he did try to return it to the boy's father but he refused it, so that meant the coach could keep it (and sell it, if he wanted). As you might imagine, Judge Judy ripped into the kid and his mother because the kid stole the $20 in the first place. As I said, that's about all I saw of it, but it seemed like she was going to dismiss both cases.

The coach came across as quite sympathetic since he runs this program for "at-risk" kids and raises money for it through community events such as car washes. He also puts some cash of his own into the program.