A former volleyball coach, beset by years of sexual abuse allegations, has sued a prominent Chicago class action law firm he said led “duplicitous litigation” over allegedly false accusations.
In February 2018, Laura Mullen filed a federal lawsuit in Chicago alleging coach Rick Butler had a history of “sexual abuse of underage girls” in connection with Sports Performance Volleyball Club and Great Lakes Volleyball Center, operated by GLV Inc. Butler’s wife, Cheryl Butler, also was a named defendant. Mullen, whose daughter played at Sports Performance, said she and other parents “would never have sent their girls” to the club had they known “a child sexual predator would coach their teenage daughters.”
Mullen’s allegations followed national sports media reporting on Butler’s ban from both USA Volleyball and the Amateur Athletic Union. Mullen said ESPN called Butler “the most powerful coach in youth volleyball,” noting he was able to place his players to top college programs throughout the country. She said Butler has, for more than three decades, “used his position of power to sexually abuse no fewer than six underage teenage girls, and likely more.”
In 2019, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly certified a class of those “who paid for volleyball instruction through the Sports Performance program that Rick Butler supervised.” But in 2020 he granted summary judgment to the Butlers and GLV. Although he noted his ruling did not address “whether the allegations of sexual abuse by Rick Butler are true or false,” Kennelly determined GLV made no statements about its programs’ safety that could support Mullen’s fraud allegations.
“Evidence of GLV employees' awareness of Rick's past does not — without more — support a reasonable inference that they believed he was unqualified to coach youth volleyball,” Kennelly wrote. “Furthermore, there is no evidence that would permit a reasonable inference that any GLV employee believed that Rick's history rendered GLV's staff, as a whole, unqualified to coach.”
Kennelly further determined Mullen was unsuitable as a class representative for her Illinois Physical Fitness Services and Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Practices acts claims but offered the class a chance to substitute a suitable plaintiff. That didn’t happen, and by the time the issue reached the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which issued its opinion June 23, 2022, Mullen conceded it was an individual action and had dropped many of the legal theories argued before Kennelly.
“Like the district judge, we do not take any position on whether the reports are right about what happened in the 1980s, let alone on whether Butler’s behavior was ethical even if the girls had reached the age of 18,” read the appellate opinion, written by Circuit Judge Frank Easterbrook. The panel affirmed Kennelly’s ruling that Mullen couldn’t show a legal injury.
On June 23, 2023, the Butlers and GLV sued Mullen and Edelson PC, citing a “sham class action lawsuit” they called “part of a deceitful, calculated plan to cut the Butlers off from their supporters, punish GLV customers for their association with the Butlers, and destroy the Butlers’ business.”
In their motion, the Butlers painted the initial 1994 accusations against Rick as overblown assertions about players he coached in the 1980s who “were above the legal age of consent” at the time. They singled out his former business partner, Kay Rogness, noting she didn’t come forward with any allegations until “shortly after Rick made his final buyout payment to her.” The Butlers further said those accusations factored into an adoption process in 1994, but a court-appointed investigator found Rick “did not break any laws then or now.”
“Edelson PC and the accusers recognized that the prior attacks on the Butlers were unsuccessful, and that families involved in the Sports Performance program were among Rick’s strongest supporters,” according to the new lawsuit. “Sports Performance families trusted their own personal experience with the Butlers over the decades-old accusations in the media and have continued to send their children to the club year after year.”
The complaint also said Edelson and Mullen filed their lawsuit in the wake of “the sentencing of Dr. Larry Nassar, the disgraced former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor who sexually abused young athletes in his care.”
The Butlers said Mullen’s lawsuit and conduct cause them to sell their home of 20 years in order to fund their legal defense, as well as move into a complex providing additional security.
“The Butlers continue to face harassment, stalking and threats from people they have never met,” the lawsuit says. “Every day, the Butlers fear for their safety.”
Formal complaints against the Edelson firm include one count of malicious prosecution and one of abuse of process. The Butlers and GLV are represented by attorney Danielle D’Ambrose, of Chicago. In addition to a jury trial, they seek damages in excess of $50,000.