Albert Pujols sued former big leaguer Jack Clark a couple of weeks ago after the latter went on his radio show and accused the former of using PEDs. Jack Clark and his lawyers, rather than actually try to defend themselves via traditional means available to them in litigation, have decided to make a media circus out of it: he has challenged Pujols to dueling lie detector tests.
Setting aside the fact that polygraph tests are inadmissible and have no real value to the legal system and are wildly unreliable, this gambit is pretty dumb and disingenuous on its own merits. To see so, one need look no further than the way Clark’s lawyer frames the matter to be tested: he offers that the question to be asked Clark would be whether he was truthful when he said that Pujols’ trainer told him that Pujols had used PEDs.
Which is great except for the fact that that’s not even the real basis of the lawsuit.
Yes, Clark’s statements were that Pujols’ trainer told him that Pujols used PEDs. But the clear idea Clark was expressing is not that he was told something. It’s that what he was told was true. He was offering, through the thinnest possible cover of Pujols’ trainer, that Pujols did in fact take PEDs. Not that he was merely told it. Indeed, the actual legal claim by Pujols, by definition, covers not just knowingly telling reputation-harming lies, but spreading reputation-harming misinformation with reckless disregard for their truth. So he could very well have been told that by Pujols’ trainer. And it wouldn’t matter if (a) it was a lie; and (b) Clark was reckless in ascertaining whether or not it was true.
That bit of nonsense aside, it’s totally irrelevant. Polygraph exams have no bearing on litigation. This is a sideshow mounted in an effort by Clark’s camp to gain some sort of P.R. advantage. Nothing more.
