According to The New York Times, the lawsuit, initially filed in 2010 by Floyd Landis, one of Armstrong’s former teammates, asserts that the defendants concealed the doping from their sponsors because the sponsorship contract expressly prohibited the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
Ronald C. Machen Jr., United States attorney for the District of Columbia, said the government joined Landis as a plaintiff because Armstrong and his associates “took more than $30 million from the U.S. Postal Service based on their contractual promise to play fair and abide by the rules.”
It is also unfair, he said, that the Postal Service is now associated with the cycling team that ran what the United States Anti-Doping Agency has called the most sophisticated doping program in history.
“In today’s economic climate, the U.S. Postal Service is simply not in a position to allow Lance Armstrong or any of the other defendants to walk away with the tens of millions of dollars they illegitimately procured,” Machen said in a statement.
The above article was first appeared in The Sport Intern, a blog published by Karl-Heinz Huba in Lorsch, Germany. This article is reprinted here with permission from the blog publisher. Mr. Huba can be reached via email at ISMG@aol.com.