Mike Leach Appeal Denied by Texas Supreme Court

Texas’ highest civil court has denied an appeal from Texas Tech’s former head football coach.

Friday morning, the Texas Supreme Court denied Mike Leach’s appeal of his wrongful termination lawsuit, following his December 30, 2009 firing from Texas Tech.

The court declined to elaborate on declining the lawsuit from Leach, who replaced Paul Wulff as the head football coach at Washington State.

Texas Tech rejected a settlement offer from Leach last November 28^th, two days before Leach was hired by the Washington State Cougars. Leach’s terms were to be paid “Simply what I was owed under the contract for working in 2009, which I completed except for one day.”

Texas Tech attorney Dicky Grigg weighed in on the issue following the ruling Friday, saying “We have always maintained that the law and facts dictated a dismissal of Mike Leach’s claims, and after reviewing the thousands of pages of the record, the Texas Supreme Court agreed with us that Texas Tech does not owe Mike Leach a penny.”

Leach was fired due to a refusal to write an official apology for conduct against Tech player Adam James. His firing came one day before Leach was owed an $800,000 tenure bonus, in addition to $1.7 million for 2009 guaranteed outside income and bonuses. He was paid his 2009 base salary of $300,000.

Appeals for both sides were denied by the Texas Supreme Court, which allows Leach to continue in seeking a ruling which showed that Texas Tech did indeed fire him inappropriately.

Leach recently hired new lead attorney Stephen Heninger of Alabama to replace Paul Dobrowski. Lubbock Attorney Ted Liggett is still representing Leach as well.