During a recent appearance on “Hannibal TV”, WWE’s lead attorney Jerry McDevitt commented on how he began working for WWE and Vince McMahon, what their relationship is like, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On how he began working with WWE and Vince McMahon: “My first time was WWE came in 1987. Back then, Jim ‘The Anvil’ Neidhart and Bret Hart were the Tag Team Champions, as I would learn, and they were flying in the Pittsburgh one night to perform up at the Civic Arena in January of 1987. At the end of the flight, the FBI went on the plane and arrested Jim and charged him with a federal felony of interference with a flight group. The allegation being that he had supposedly punched the flight attendant in a dispute over drinks. At that time, I had been working on a case out in Colorado, with a fellow who was then representative Vince and Linda in the early days of the WWE by the name of Ted Dinsmore. So when Jim got arrested, Vince and Linda called Ted, Ted in turn called me and asked me if I would be willing to represent the guy.”
On not being familiar with WWE at the time: “I knew absolutely nothing really about WWE at the time, I guess I probably had heard of it, but I really wasn’t a fan, hadn’t watched it, whatnot. And so I said, ‘No, Tom, come see me in the morning.’ So again, keeping in mind my law firm was sort of white-shoe dress-down corporate people. Jim shows up the next day with these wraparound shades, a ZZ Top beard, I’m sure you guys know who he is. He was one of the scariest-looking people you’ll ever meet in your life, but he turned out to be a hell of a nice guy. What I remember most about it was the day he came in, he was in abject terror that he was gonna have to call this guy named ‘Vince.’ I kept thinking to myself, Christ almighty, what’s this Vince guy like if this guy scared of him for Christ’s sake?’
“So he did, he had to call Vince and tell him about the trouble he was in and all the rest of that, got his butt chewed out and all the rest of that. In any event, though, I went on to represent Jim, and he was acquitted of all those charges. The next day, I brought a malicious prosecution case against US Air and three flight attendants who had caused him to be arrested for charges that turn out to be categorically false. He didn’t do anything like what they said he did and ended up getting him a couple of $100,000 for the troubles over that. I think that kind of got Vince’s attention a little bit, because I don’t think he had a great love affair for lawyers at that point still doesn’t, as a matter of fact.”
On why he and McMahon get along so well: “Probably because we’re both you know, A-Type personalities. I think Vince is kind of like — I have this view: if you haven’t done anything wrong, then face up and defend yourself. A lot of these people nowadays, if you’re sued and somebody accuses you of something, then that the natural tendency is to deny, hunker down, and pay somebody to go away, but we just don’t do that. We’ve never done that. If something has been gone wrong, it’s going to be done wrong in error, not by intent, usually. If you’ve done something wrong, then you try to fix it, but if you haven’t done anything wrong, then you defend yourself.”
(h/t – Fightful)
