The Power of A Memo

Koshin Egal

Billy Gillispie, the former basketball coach of the University of Kentucky Men’s basketball team, is suing the university for breach of contract. Ashley Judd’s favorite team has responded in kind by suing their former coach.

Gillispie, who filed his claim on Wednesday, is seeking $6 million. During his time with the team he complied a 40-27 record with one NCAA tournament appearance. Kentucky fired him and replaced him with John Calipari this year.

The interesting thing about this case is that Gillispie never signed a formal contract instead he signed what was a “Memorandum of understanding”. This understanding was put in place so that he could get to work and that in the reasonable future a proper contract would be made.

This never happened.

The memorandum, which was no more than a memo, calls for the school to pay Gillispie $1.5 million for the remainder of his contract. The courts will have to see if this memo was binding, which I could see it being so. The reasoning for this is that the memo was being honored as a contract for the two years that he was there, and if it includes a buyout clause then that will most likely be seen as binding.