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Bouchard and USTA reach settlement

NEW YORK — Eugenie Bouchard and the U.S. Tennis Association reached a resolution Friday, ending Bouchard’s lawsuit over the head injury she suffered from a fall at the 2015 U.S. Open.

In a statement later Friday, the USTA said the matter “has reached an amicable conclusion for both parties” and added, “We also wish Ms. Bouchard the best of luck moving forward.”

Bouchard sued the USTA in October 2015, about six weeks after she slipped on cleaning fluid on the floor of a dimly lit trainers room at the U.S. Open in New York. She had to withdraw from the singles, doubles and mixed doubles events, and she did not complete a match for the rest of that season.

Bouchard, 23, won the liability phase of the trial Thursday, though the jury said she bore 25 percent of the comparative negligence for her injury. That meant that the USTA would have had to pay her only 75 percent of whatever value the jury assigned to her damages.

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“I feel vindicated that I got the verdict yesterday,” she said. “Just relief and happiness right now.”

After each side’s lawyers made lengthy opening arguments to begin the damages phase of the trial at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, proceedings were suspended for four hours as the legal teams, Bouchard and representatives from the USTA met.

Bouchard’s lawyer, Benedict Morelli, initially said he was ready to put Bouchard on the stand after several hours of talks had not reached a resolution. She had testified Wednesday in the liability phase of the trial. But in the corridors of the courthouse, he appeared to persuade Bouchard, who was alongside her mother, Julie Leclair, to take the deal the USTA had offered.

“When people attack you and attack your name, you get affected by that,” Morelli said of Bouchard’s hesitation. “When you’re resolving it, you want to make sure you can live with it.”

“She’s pleasantly living with it,” he added.

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Leclair began to cry as she expressed her relief at the settlement.

“Just relieved that it’s over,” she said. “We try to put it out of our minds, but it’s been a tough two years. Tough on her, tough on the whole family, and I’m just glad it’s over.”

The opening arguments of the damages phase set up what could have been fascinating speculative arguments about how Bouchard’s career might have proceeded had the injury not occurred.

She reached the fourth round of the 2015 U.S. Open before being forced to withdraw. Morelli contended that Bouchard, then No. 25, was ranked ahead of the women who would have been her next two opponents, 43rd-ranked Roberta Vinci and 40th-ranked Kristina Mladenovic, and was therefore likely to win both matches.

He further argued that Bouchard would have had a chance to win against top-ranked Serena Williams in the semifinals, mentioning that “Genie has beaten Serena Williams in the past.” He did not disclose that that win came at the Hopman Cup exhibition event, which is not counted in head-to-head records.

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Alan Kaminsky, the USTA’s lawyer, countered by pointing out that Bouchard’s results had been poor throughout the 2015 season. He noted that she had lost, badly, to Vinci just one week before the Open and had a losing record against Mladenovic.

“The chances of her winning the U.S. Open that year were extremely not good,” Kaminsky said.

The USTA also appeared ready to dispute the nature of her injury itself, refuting the diagnosis of a concussion. (The Open had announced that a concussion was her official reason for withdrawing from the tournament at the time.)

Kaminsky said numerous MRI exams were found to be negative for a concussion.

“She did have a bang to the head, and was treated properly for that,” he said.

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Kaminsky also refuted Bouchard’s assertion that she has lost millions in possible endorsement deals because of the fall, saying she “did not lose one endorsement deal” since the accident.

“When you hear how much money Bouchard has made from endorsements, you’re not going to believe it,” Kaminsky told the jury. “It’s staggering.”

The jury did not end up hearing that information, which Bouchard had been eager to keep as private as possible. She had filed a motion, which was denied, seeking to remove reporters from the courtroom for testimony regarding her endorsements.

Bouchard had also wanted her social media posts to be kept out of the trial, arguing that they painted a misleadingly sunny portrait of her life since the injury. Judge Ann M. Donnelly ruled against that request, too, saying that the court is public and that social media was an admissible record of her state of mind pertaining to various claims of emotional damages and psychological suffering.

Bouchard’s next tournament will be in Indian Wells, California, in March. She is ranked 116th, well outside the cutoff for the main draw, but said she was hoping to receive a wild card.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

BEN ROTHENBERG © 2018 The New York Times

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