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The University of Minnesota and its men’s basketball coach were not negligent in their dealings with an aspiring assistant coach who said he left his previous institution because Minnesota had promised him a job there, the state Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. The decision overturns previous rulings from the district and appeals court that found in favor of James R. Williams, the assistant coach, and frees Minnesota of any damages.
Williams sued in 2007, alleging that he had accepted an assistant coaching job offer from the coach, Tubby Smith, but never got it. Minnesota maintained that Smith had interviewed Williams, but never reached an employment agreement because of Williams’s record of National Collegiate Athletic Association recruiting violations. The university also pointed out that it did not encourage Williams to resign from Oklahoma State University and put his house on the market. The court found that Smith had in fact told Williams that the athletics director would make the final hiring decision, so the university could not have misled Williams, as he claimed.
