Mendenhall, the fourth-year Pittsburgh Steelers running back, has filed a lawsuit against Champion seeking more than $1 million from the activewear company. Champion ended its endorsement contract with Mendenhall after he posted some controversial tweets following the death of Osama bin Laden.
Mendenhall and his lawyers argue that a spokesman does not forfeit his right to free speech when he signs an endorsement deal. The case has echoes of a case brought by a Texas cheerleader who refused to cheer for a high school basketball player whom she had accused of raping her; a court ruled the cheerleader was acting as an agent of the school and therefore did not have free-speech rights in that situation.
The circuit court dismissed her lawsuit and reportedly ordered the girl's family to pay the school district $45,000 in legal fees.
Both cases had to do with free speech while representing another entity, but while the cheerleader's case was sympathetic, Mendenhall's is not.
Twitter erupted in the wake of President Obama's announcement that the al-Qaeda leader had been killed. Mendenhall started by tweeting that he did not believe it was right to celebrate a death, not even the death of the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
"What kind of person celebrates death?" Mendenhall tweeted. "It's amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak."
That probably wouldn't have gotten Mendenhall in any trouble. Many others expressed a similar sentiment.
But the end of that tweet, and the one that followed, were controversial.
"We've only heard one side…" he tweeted, followed by "We'll never know what really happened. I just have a hard time believing a plane could take a skyscraper down demolition style."
Champion promptly cut off their endorsement relationship.
Mendenhall is unlikely to find any sympathizers — in this country, at least — and the content of his comments might overshadow the actual impact of the case. It might not; after all, while most of the public sided with the cheerleader in her case, the law came down decisively on the other side.
In the cheerleader's case, though, the circumstances made it a complicated case, even though the school ultimately had the law on its side. Even those who agreed with the decision knew it was an unpopular move to penalize a high school girl who alleges she was raped. There's nothing complicated or unpopular about putting a 9/11 denier in his place.
Whether a company can void a contract if a celebrity speaks his mind is an argument worth having in court. Mendenhall is just not the right person to bring it.
