A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge granted Todd McNair’s motion for a new trial in the former USC assistant coach’s long-running defamation lawsuit against the NCAA and issued a stinging rebuke of how the organization investigated the Reggie Bush extra benefits scandal.
In a ruling filed Wednesday morning, Judge Frederick Shaller wrote that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to support a jury’s finding in May that the NCAA didn’t defame McNair. The judge also ruled that the jury foreman, an attorney whose firm did appellate work for the NCAA in the case years earlier, should have been disqualified.