Ralph Sasson, the typically aggro-bro law student you see in the video above, is a former long-time friend of Ryan Braun's who is suing the Brewers star and Braun's agent, Nez Balelo, for defamation. Sasson is also the kind of guy who's not afraid to say "fuck it" and post not only his full 90-minute deposition on YouTube, but also a nearly eight-minute highlight reel of the deposition that is full of him dropping sick owns all over the defense attorney. [Update: Tomahawk dunk reel has been removed. Up there is the full deposition.]
If you've ever been to or spent time around a law school, you've encountered dudes like Sasson. These are the dudes who are convinced that they are the real-life version of Daniel Kaffee, only better at crushing beer bongs.
Sasson's case against Braun and Balelo (which you can read here) is entertaining in its own right. In it, Sasson claims that Balelo contacted him shortly after Braun tested positive for steroids in 2011 and told Sasson that he would pay him $5,000 for help researching legal loopholes that might help Braun win his appeal. According to the suit, Braun and Balelo tried to get out of paying the $5,000 because Sasson "didn't know what the fuck he was talking about." Sasson eventually got paid, but then he decided to sue anyway because Braun allegedly went on to make all kinds of defamatory statements against him. There's also this passage:
Braun made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that he wanted Sasson to engage in prank calling [ESPN investigative reporter Mark] Fainaru-Wada for disinformation purposes. Braun wanted to advance the proposition that the original information [T.J.] Quinn and Fainaru-Wada obtained regarding Braun was part of an elaborate conspiracy to assassinate the character of multiple baseball players and agents including, but not limited to, Ryan Braun.
Which brings us to this crazy-ass deposition tape being made public, which the defense attorneys are obviously not happy about. As Sasson told ESPN, though, he couldn't give less of a fuck:
Sasson, who hopes to pursue a legal career, clearly relishes the fight. In a Wednesday email exchange he provided to "Outside the Lines," Sasson writes to Kravit, "I hope the court takes this joke of a motion seriously so I can wipe my posterior with it. ... You want me to destroy all copies of my [deposition]? The copies I paid for? How about this: I'll destroy my copies after you let me foreclose on your home. Those copies belong to me. You want an ex parte order to deprive me of my property? Go read the constitution pal and stop smoking whatever it is you're smoking. Or at the very least, share some with me because it's def some real good stuff. You're making a fool of yourself, Steve. There's something called due process and due process ain't those little droplets of water that form on the grass in the early hours of the spring morning. Get a grip."
Law students, man.
[ESPN]