CINCINNATI (AP) – University of Mississippi basketball coach Andy Kennedy on Tuesday settled a defamation lawsuit with a cab driver and a valet stemming from a dispute over a ride.
Details of the settlement are confidential and no money amounts were specified as attorneys told Judge Melba Marsh in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court that they had reached an agreement.
The cab driver, who had told police Kennedy punched him and used racial slurs after he refused to carry all five members of Kennedy’s staff because his taxi had only four seats for passengers, said he was sorry.
iver Mohamed Jiddou said in court.
The valet, Michael Strother, who witnessed the altercation, did not issue an apology but accepted Kennedy’s apology from 2009.
“All matters between me and coach Kennedy have been resolved,” Strother said after court.
Kennedy had apologized in court to Jiddou and Strother in April 2009. He had denied punching and taunting Jiddou in 2008 after his arrest on an assault charge in the altercation but pleaded guilty in April 2009 to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct and issued the apologies at that time.
Kennedy and his attorney, William Posey, would only say that Kennedy had sought an apology.
“He came for his (Jiddou’s) apology, and he got his apology,” Posey said.
Kennedy had filed the civil suit after he was arrested in Cincinnati in 2008 over the altercation with the cabbie. The counterclaims filed by Jiddou and Strother in response to Kennedy’s lawsuit also were resolved with Tuesday’s settlement.
Jury selection had begun in Kennedy’s suit Monday and was to resume Tuesday, but the attorneys spent most of the day in discussions.
After the settlement was announced, the judge asked Kennedy, Jiddou and Strother to shake hands in court, which they did. She then asked the attorneys to do the same.
Kennedy has been coach at Ole Miss since March 2006, leading the team to postseason play three times.
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