The criminal fraud trial of several Pilot Flying J executives has been placed on hold until January 8. At some point after it resumes, the case is going to make major headlines for a different reason than the scheme to defraud customers of the truck-stop chain by cheating them out of fuel rebates.
Via the Knoxville News Sentinel, the presiding judge said on Thursday that secretly-recorded tapes containing the voice of former Pilot Flying J president Mark Hazelwood will be played for the jury. The judge described the comments as including “vile, despicable, inflammatory racial epithets” that disparaged “the entire population of Cleveland, Ohio,” the city of Oakland, California, and the Cleveland Browns.
Browns owner and Pilot Flying J CEO Jimmy Haslam was asked about the audio during the Friday press conference introducing John Dorsey as the Browns’ new G.M.
“I’m actually glad you brought that up,” Haslam said. “I have said since the investigation began almost five years ago that we wouldn’t comment, but yesterday’s comments that came out of the courtroom I think justify comments. I will just stand behind what we said yesterday: First of all, none of those individuals work for us anymore. Nobody that works for our company now was present at that event. That is not how we act and do things, and those kind of remarks are intolerable. I’m actually glad you asked that question.”
Haslam also admitted that the company is paying for the defense of Hazelwood and other former employees who are on trial.
“Without getting into too much detail, it is traditional when employees of a company are sued or have a legal problem that the company until those employees plead guilty or are found guilty, the company pays for their legal expenses so that will continue,” Haslam said.
It’s definitely traditional for employees who are sued for things done in the course of business to have their legal expenses covered. The tradition is a bit murkier when it comes to criminal misconduct, and any company that pays for the legal expenses in a criminal trial of a former employee invites speculation that there’s a not-so-subtle quid pro quo at work regarding the things that will or won’t be said, and/or the defenses that will or won’t be pursued.
For example, if Pilot Flying J weren’t paying for Hazelwood’s defense, maybe Hazelwood’s lawyer, Rusty Hardin, would be arguing not that code words used by lower level employees kept Hazelwood from being aware of the scheme to defraud customers but that Hazelwood was simply doing what he was told to do from above.
Regardless, and even though Haslam didn’t make the comments himself and apparently wasn’t present for them, the publication of “vile, despicable, inflammatory racial epithets” from the person Haslam hired to be president of Pilot Flying J could spark a broader discussion and debate about whether Hazelwood’s attitudes and words reflect the culture and attitudes of others in the company.