Another Insurance Carrier Files Suit Against Lance Armstrong
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Michael Stewart/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — A previously unknown insurance carrier has decided to file suit against Lance Armstrong for $3 million, plus damages, ABC News has learned.
The case was filed late Thursday in Austin, Texas, and will be assigned a case number on Friday.
The Nebraska company, Acceptance Insurance, covered the bonuses on Armstrong’s Tour de France wins from 1999 to 2001. Another insurance company, SCA, previously filed suit to recoup millions more in bonus money from later Tour wins.
Unlike SCA, Acceptance has never raised any red flags or gone public in any way over the years — they have remained totally unknown. Sources says Armstrong’s interview with Oprah Winfrey changed that and opened the door for Acceptance to go after him as well.
What the cyclist did in the interview that made it possible to fight such an old matter was admitting “fraudulent concealment” — that he threatened and bullied to such an extent that Acceptance could not have known the truth in a timely fashion.
Money aside, Acceptance plans to depose Armstrong. He’s also facing the prospect of being deposed in a slew of other pending cases, all of which he has tried and failed to settle out of court.
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