By Jamie Satterfield, USA TODAY NETWORK
KNOXVILLE, Tennessee - Caught hurling racially offensive insults at his boss' football team and its fans, former Pilot Flying J President Mark Hazelwood threatened to drag the team into a legal fight when his boss decided to fire him, records show.
In May 2014 - 13 months after Pilot Flying J's Knoxville headquarters was raided - the truck stop giant decided to fire Hazelwood after the board and its chief executive officer - Browns owner Jimmy Haslam - learned Hazelwood had been captured on secret recordings using racial epithets to impugn the team, the fans and the city and mocking Pilot Flying J's board.
After learning of the recordings, Pilot Flying J immediately invoked what is known in the financial community as a "bad boy clause" in Hazelwood's employment contract to oust Hazelwood, records obtained by USA Today Network-Tennessee showed.
Hazelwood, those records showed, fought back.
He contended Haslam wanted to fire him for trashing the Browns, not committing misconduct that would trigger the "bad boy clause." Hazelwood, then, had not been charged in the fraud conspiracy that prompted the raid.
"Hazelwood claims that his termination was in violation of the just cause provisions of the Pilot employment agreement ..., and he further claims that Jimmy Haslam III acted on behalf of JHAC, LLC, hereafter the Cleveland Browns, to induce the breach of and/or tortuously interfere with the employment contracts," a section of a settlement agreement approved in May 2014 read.
Pilot Flying J denied Hazelwood's claim in the same settlement agreement.
"The company denies that Hazelwood's termination breached the employment contracts, and the company and Haslam deny that Haslam wrongfully induced the breach of and/or tortuously interfered with the employment contracts, either individually or acting on behalf of the Cleveland Browns," the document read.
With their respective positions memorialized, the two sides struck a deal in which Hazelwood wouldn't mount a legal challenge nor would he receive all the pay he would have been entitled to under a 2008 employment contract, legal language in the document showed.
The board agreed to pay Hazelwood $20 million to keep him from going to work for a Pilot Flying J competitor, another $4 million to settle the employment contract dispute and $16 million in "future unearned income." Hazelwood was earning $26.9 million annually at the time.
Earlier, Pilot Flying J had released a statement regarding the payments saying, "When Mr. Hazelwood was separated from the Company, he received payments due pursuant to his pre-existing employment agreement."
Hazelwood also agreed "to accept full and sole responsibility for and not to re-publish his racial remarks" captured on a recording by a Pilot Flying J mole during an October 2012 sales executives meeting at a lake home in Rockwood, according to a section of the settlement agreement cited in recently unsealed records in U.S. District Court.
Hazelwood was indicted 20 months after the agreement was inked. A jury in U.S. District Court in Chattanooga last month convicted him of plotting to lure truckers into doing business with Pilot Flying J in return for discounts on diesel fuel and then cheating them.
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