The wife of a Western Michigan booster has filed a defamation suit against three posters on a Western Michigan message board.
Bonnie A. Zeigler fled the lawsuit against the three users on the site CSNbbs.com for posting rumors about her and Wetern Michigan coach P.J. Fleck.
The three men named in the lawsuit are Dan Burgardt of Schoolcraft, Randolph T. Foster, a WMU alumnus who lives in Colorado, and Bruce L. Bendix, a member of the Michigan High School Football Coaches Hall of Fame.
Bendix is a Kalamazoo native who played football at Western Michigan University in the 1970s before going on to coach at Kalamazoo College and Comstock and Otsego high schools, among other places. In 1999, he moved to the east side of the state where he continued coaching at various high schools and he recently resigned as Hemlock High School's head coach, MLive reported on Jan. 1.
Zeigler is seeking damages in excess of $25,000 against each defendant, as well as attorneys' fees and costs, for alleged defamation and false light, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit claims that Bendix, Burgardt and Foster each posted "false and defamatory statements" about Zeigler on the sports website CSNbbs.com while using the online pseudonyms "MajorHoople," "Chipdip2" and "DesertBronco," respectively.
Zeigler is the wife of Aaron Zeigler, the president of the Zeigler Auto Group in Michigan. According to MLive, she's been listed as a member of the group that gives over $10,000 each per year to WMU athletics.
All three posted retractions in this thread on the site. This is the user MajorHoople's retracted post, which was modified on November 10, per the timestamp on the post.
I hereby retract any and all claims I have made on Bronco Stampede including but not limited to this thread that an unnamed member of the Ziegler family and Mr. PJ Fleck engaged in an adulterous extramarital affair, and that Ziegler Auto Group has withdrawn all of its funding from Western Michigan University as a result.
A law firm has communicated to me via csnbbs.com that these claims are false, defamatory, and legally actionable.
Since I had no first-hand knowledge of the alleged affair and withdrawal of funding, I should not have published them. I sincerely apologize to all affected or offended.
As far as practicable I am publishing and communicating this retraction in the same size type and the same manner as the original posts.
Fleck declined comment for MLive's story. According to Burgardt, he posted his comments as satire while Foster called his posts "message board nonsense."
Western Michigan went 8-5 in 2014 after a 1-11 season in 2013. Fleck received a six-year contract extension in December and became the MAC's highest-paid coach.
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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
From Dr. Saturday - NCAAF - Yahoo Sports - Woman sues message board posters for P.J. Fleck rumors
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