New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning is hitting back at a lawsuit that maintains he participated in a scheme to pass off bogus “game-worn” memorabilia as the real deal — saying he was only dragged into the sordid affair because of his fame.
In a court filing Thursday, lawyers for Manning said there isn’t a stitch of evidence that the two-time Super Bowl MVP had anything to do with the alleged scheme laid out in a shocking lawsuit filed in New Jersey.
The January suit claimed a helmet on display in the Pro Football Hall of Fame — supposedly worn by Manning in Big Blue’s 2008 Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots — is among dozens of fake items the quarterback and his Giants cohorts created to make money from collectors over the years.
In a 40-page motion to dismiss the suit, Manning’s lawyers called the claims “baseless” and “preposterous,” and said Manning, “one of the most respected and highest paid football players in the entire National Football League,” was only named because of his “fame and public notoriety.”
Manning’s lawyers also blasted the timing of the suit, filed days before the 2013 Super Bowl in the Giants’ home, MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ, as “a shameless effort to grab media and public attention.”
The suit, brought by sports memorabilia collector Eric Inselberg, accused the teams’ equipment staffers, together with Manning and Giants management, of fooling fans for more than a decade with jerseys and helmets that were made to look as though they had been worn during games, making them far more valuable to collectors.
But Manning’s lawyers insist that Inselberg never said that “Manning even knew [Inselberg] and what he did for a living.”
They also said Inselberg never claimed in his lawsuit that Manning had “any knowledge or involvement whatsoever” in creating the allegedly fake helmet on display in Canton, Ohio.
Inselberg’s suit alleges a Giants vice president ordered a duplicate of the Manning Super Bowl helmet after learning that the real headgear had already been sold to Inselberg.
The Giants and other staffers named in the lawsuit, including team CEO and co-owner John Mara, also filed motions to dismiss on Thursday. Mara’s lawyers called the lawsuit “altogether vicious and irresponsible.”
Inselberg’s lawyer, Brian Brook, said he received the briefs for the Giants and Manning and “will review them thoroughly.”