CEO: I never talked to Turner about Hawks, Thrashers sale

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Turner Broadcasting System CEO Phil Kent testified Monday he never talked to company founder Ted Turner about a potential sale of the Atlanta Hawks, Thrashers and Philips Arena operating rights to Texas businessman David McDavid.

He also never spoke to any of the team’s eventual owners — who include Turner’s son, Beau, and son-in-law Rutherford Seydel — about the potential deal, Kent said in Fulton County Superior Court.

And Kent said, as far as he knows, Turner didn’t assist Seydel and the others, who formed a group known as the Atlanta Spirit, in buying the professional teams and arena rights in a deal that closed in 2004.

“I always perceived Rutherford’s participation to be very minor,” he told the jury.

But McDavid signed a letter of intent to buy them in 2003. The letter expired that July, but the parties continued to negotiate for months.

Turner announced in September of that year it instead would sell the teams to the Spirit group. McDavid later filed a $450 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against the company. The trial, which started in early October, is expected to last another three weeks.

Ted Turner is not a witness for this trial and no longer works for the Atlanta-based media company or its parent, Time Warner. But his name has started to come up in court.

Turner was the vice chairman of Time Warner’s board in 2003. He voted against the sale to McDavid. So did Steve Case, founder of AOL — which merged with Time Warner in 2001. Case was also a board member at the time of the sale.

Attorneys for McDavid on Monday presented a June 23, 2003, e-mail that Case sent to Time Warner Chairman and CEO Richard Parsons saying he was “confused” about the proposed sports teams sale.

Case referred to it as a “fire sale” and suggested that perhaps it “might be appropriate to postpone the sale until the market improves,” the e-mail said.

In the last sentence of the e-mail, Case wrote, “I am copying Ted on this as he knows a lot more about this than I do and I am particularly curious to understand his view.”

Last Friday, Jim McCaffrey, an Turner executive, testified that he also never spoke with Ted Turner about the company’s decision to sell the teams and arena operating rights. While in court on Monday, McCaffrey said he did not know until months later — Aug. 17 — after that e-mail exchange between Case and Parsons that others were interested in buying the teams.

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