Someone is lying. And Jack Clark is ready to prove it’s not him.
Clark, the former Cardinal who recently was sued for defamation for accusing Albert Pujols of using steroids, is willing to take a lie-detector test if Pujols does as well, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Clark’s attorney sent a letter to Pujols’ legal team on Monday making the offer.
Clark’s comments came in early August on his sports radio program, “The King and The Ripper,” in which he claimed Pujols’ former trainer, Chris Mihlfeld, told Clark he injected Pujols, the longtime Cardinals slugger, with performance-enhancing drugs in 2000. Since then, Mihlfeld has denied speaking with Clark, the radio show has been cancelled and the company that produced the show, insideSTL, issued a lengthy retraction and apology.
Pujols’ suit, filed on Oct. 4, calls Clark’s comments “malicious, reckless and outrageous falsehoods.”
Still, in the letter from Clark’s attorney, Al Watkins, it’s proposed each side submit to a polygraph test in order to settle the lawsuit, though lie-detector tests are inadmissible in legal proceedings and known to be unreliable.
Pujols would be asked whether “he is being deceptive when he asserts that he has never used steroids or performing-enhancing drugs while in the minor and major leagues” and Clark would be asked whether he is being deceptive about Mihlfeld telling him that Pujols “juiced.”
Various solutions are listed in the letter based on the polygraph results, and all of them involve one party apologizing to the other. Watkins already has admitted his client used a poor choice of words.