{"id":9864,"date":"2015-03-11T06:55:17","date_gmt":"2015-03-11T11:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/?p=9864"},"modified":"2015-03-11T06:55:17","modified_gmt":"2015-03-11T11:55:17","slug":"if-you-really-want-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/?p=9864","title":{"rendered":"IF YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Sailor\u2019s Salary: $300,000, If He Works for Larry Ellison<\/h1>\n

Lawsuit sheds light on America\u2019s Cup spending by Oracle founder<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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\"Oracle<\/div>\n
Oracle Team USA during the 2013 America’s Cup, which it won in a dramatic comeback.<\/span>\u00a0PHOTO:\u00a0<\/span>GETTY IMAGES<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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By<\/p>\n
STU WOO<\/span>\u00a0and<\/div>\n
AARON KURILOFF<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A lawsuit against\u00a0Larry Ellison\u00a0<\/a>\u2019s sailing squad, which has led to the seizure of one of his million-dollar boats, is also revealing how much the\u00a0Oracle\u00a0<\/a>Corp. founder is willing to spend to win the America\u2019s Cup: $300,000 a year for a rank-and-file sailor.<\/p>\n

The litigation is the latest in a series of legal battles that have surrounded the billionaire\u2019s sailing successes.<\/p>\n

On Monday morning, two federal marshals walked into the San Francisco waterfront base of the sailing squad, Oracle Team USA, and seized three gray, whale-size containers holding the disassembled parts of a 45-foot-long, seven-story-tall yacht called an AC45, according to the plaintiff\u2019s lawyer and a U.S. Marshals spokesman.<\/p>\n

The marshals tagged the three containers, which can\u2019t be moved until a judge issues a ruling on the seizure or allows the team to post a bond on the boat. The vessel, a smaller version of Oracle\u2019s victorious 72-foot-long boat in the 2013 America\u2019s Cup, is being held as a lien, or collateral, in the case. The plaintiff asked for the seizure.<\/p>\n

The plaintiff is Joe Spooner, who spent a decade as an Oracle sailor until the team dismissed him in January. A 41-year-old New Zealand native, Spooner in February sued the team for $725,000 in wages over a 2\u00bd-year span, as well as double-wage penalties, punitive damages and legal fees, alleging the squad wrongfully discharged him without cause.<\/p>\n

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\"LarryLarry Ellison in September 2013 after winning the America\u2019s Cup.<\/span>\u00a0PHOTO:\u00a0<\/span>REUTERS<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

A team Oracle spokesman declined to comment, citing pending litigation. A spokeswoman for Ellison, who is Oracle Corp.\u2019s executive chairman, also declined to comment.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt is a match race and Spooner has the lead at the first mark!!!!!\u201d Patricia Barlow, Spooner\u2019s lawyer, said in a statement shortly after Monday\u2019s arrest of the Oracle yacht. A match race is a head-to-head contest between two competitors.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Court filings show that Spooner signed a contract with the Oracle team that would have paid him $25,000 a month, which equates to $300,000 a year, from July 2014 to the end of the next America\u2019s Cup, the world\u2019s most prestigious yacht race, which is scheduled to be held in Bermuda in 2017.<\/p>\n

In Spooner\u2019s termination letter, team Oracle general manager Grant Simmer said Spooner asked for raise to $38,000 a month to relocate from San Francisco to Bermuda. Simmer said in the letter that the team wasn\u2019t prepared to modify the squad\u2019s relocation policy specifically for Spooner, and that the team also declined to increase his pay.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor these reasons, and in the light of the stated position that you will not otherwise relocate to Bermuda, this letter constitutes prior written notice of termination\u201d of Spooner\u2019s contract, Simmer wrote.<\/p>\n

Spooner was one of six grinders on the 11-man Oracle team that won the 2013 America\u2019s Cup. In sailing, grinders are the equivalent of football offensive linemen, cranking hand-powered winches to power a boat\u2019s hydraulics system. They are typically the lowest-paid members of a sailing team; the people who adjust the sails and helm the wheel can get paid double, or even more.<\/p>\n

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\"Larry<\/div>\n
Larry Ellison, center, congratulates members of Oracle Team USA after winning the America\u2019s Cup.<\/span>\u00a0PHOTO:\u00a0<\/span>REUTERS<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Oracle is the world\u2019s top sailing squad, having won the past two America\u2019s Cup contests, and Ellison has spent lavishly to retain the world\u2019s best yachtsmen. The managing director of Emirates Team New Zealand, the runner-up in the 2013 Cup, has estimated that his sailors got paid half as much as Oracle\u2019s, an appraisal that other sailing experts this week said sounded accurate.<\/p>\n

Ellison spent at least $115 million overall on his team\u2019s 2013 America\u2019s Cup campaign, the Oracle team\u2019s chief executive has said.<\/p>\n

During Ellison\u2019s recent Cup victories, his lawyers have taken the field almost as often as his sailors. He first captured the 2010 Cup after a 2\u00bd-year legal battle over the competition\u2019s rules. Among other accusations, the Swiss team Alinghi alleged it caught a man who was hired by Ellison\u2019s crew to spy on Alinghi operations. An Oracle spokesman said at the time that those were trumped-up allegations that had nothing to do with the legal matter at hand.<\/p>\n

Another team Oracle grinder, Matt Mitchell, has sued the team for $68,000 in legal fees that he said he accumulated while fighting allegations that he helped alter an Oracle racing boat in preliminary competition before the 2013 Cup. An Oracle team spokesman declined to comment.<\/p>\n

An international jury had concluded that Oracle was guilty of making illegal modifications to the boat and forced the team to start the first-to-nine-wins 2013 Cup races with negative-two victories. On the brink of defeat, Oracle ended up winning the final eight races of the 2013 contest to stage one of the most dramatic comebacks in sports history.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Sailor\u2019s Salary: $300,000, If He Works for Larry Ellison Lawsuit sheds light on America\u2019s Cup spending by Oracle founder Oracle Team USA during the 2013 America’s Cup, which it won in a dramatic comeback.\u00a0PHOTO:\u00a0GETTY IMAGES By STU WOO\u00a0and AARON KURILOFF March 10, 2015 2:53 p.m. ET A lawsuit against\u00a0Larry Ellison\u00a0\u2019s sailing squad, which has … Continue reading IF YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,204,367,2301],"tags":[2397,2305,1545],"class_list":["post-9864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americas-cup","category-bmw-oracle","category-larry-ellison","category-maritime-law","tag-americas-cup","tag-joe-spooner","tag-oracle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9864"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9865,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9864\/revisions\/9865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenlirakis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}