Judge shifts trial date in McFadden lawsuit

Former University of Arkansas, Fayetteville and National Football League player Darren McFadden’s lawsuit against his former financial adviser and Simmons Bank was rescheduled Monday to go to trial a year from now.

In the 2016 lawsuit, McFadden contends that a former family friend, Michael Vick of Little Rock, took advantage of McFadden’s naivete to steal about $15 million from him while acting as the budding football star’s financial adviser, beginning in 2008. The lawsuit was later amended to add as defendants Vick’s wife, Carla; two companies owned or controlled by Vick; and Simmons Bank, which bought Metropolitan National Bank out of bankruptcy in 2013.

The lawsuit says that Metropolitan facilitated Vick’s theft of funds from McFadden’s accounts by failing to employ reasonable oversight procedures. Attorneys for the bank say McFadden made Vick a signatory on the player’s account and gave Vick a power of attorney over the player’s financial matters, giving Vick the authority to engage in the monetary transactions and requiring the bank to allow those transactions.

The case was scheduled for trial Oct. 22, but both sides asked last week for a postponement. Also last week, U. S. District Judge James Moody Jr. refused to dismiss Simmons as a defendant.

Moody on Monday granted the request for a postponement and rescheduled the trial to begin Feb. 11, 2019.

McFadden retired from football in late November. After playing college football with the Razorbacks, the Little Rock native was an NFL running back for the Oakland Raiders and the Dallas Cowboys.

McFadden also has two other federal lawsuits pending in Little Rock. In one, McFadden accuses Vick of fraudulently transferring property to his sister and her husband to hide his assets, in response to the first lawsuit. In November, that case was set for trial Oct. 9 of this year. But last week, U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes agreed to the parties’ request to reschedule the trial. They have asked for a date after the first of the year, but a new trial date hadn’t been set as of Monday.

The other case, also pending before Moody, names as a defendant Ameriprise Financial Services Inc., for which Vick worked when he began managing McFadden’s finances. That case is on hold to allow the parties to pursue arbitration proceedings before the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.