Browns Owner Jimmy Haslam Ordered By Judge to Be Deposed in Pilot Flying J Lawsuit

Browns owner Jimmy Haslam isn’t out of hot water when it comes to the lawsuit involving his company, Pilot Flying J, and paying back trucking customers fuel rebates.

The Tennessean is reporting that Haslam has been ordered to be deposed in the lawsuit, and will likely have to appear May 11th in Knoxville.
Here’s the story from the report:

An Alabama judge has ordered Jimmy Haslam, CEO of Pilot Flying J and owner of the NFL’s Cleveland Browns, be deposed in a civil lawsuit related to the rebate scheme plaguing the $31 billion family truck stop chain. The order comes on the three-year anniversary of the FBI raiding the company’s Knoxville headquarters.

Haslam is expected to be subpoenaed to appear at a May 11 deposition in Knoxville, according to an order issued Friday by Alabama Circuit Court Judge Sarah Hicks Stewart. The order requests the Knox County clerk issue a deposition subpoena or some similar order because “it appears to this court that the just determination of the issues (in the Alabama case) requires that the deposition testimony of James A. Haslam III be taken.”

Pilot promised fuel rebates to trucking customers, but in many cases never paid them — resulting in defrauding customers of more than $56 million and forcing the company to pay a $92 million federal penalty, according to federal documents and previous reports.

As the report points out, Haslam has been fighting to not have to appear in court, but now it sounds like those fights may not matter if the story from the paper is true.