John David Terry of Mt. Ida, Arkansas has filed a lawsuit against U of A Systems President B. Alan Sugg and U of A Chancellor John White alleging that both men breached their contact to Terry, by virtue of his status as an Arkansas taxpayer, in their handling of the series of e-mails sent to former Arkansas quarterback Mitch Mustain by Teresa Prewett, a long time friend of Houston Nutt and his brother, Arkansas running backs coach Danny Nutt.

The 41-page complaint, filed in Washington county, is the latest in a series of public debacles for the U of A athletic department.

Mustain, inceidentally, has transfered to USC, where he’ll join former teammate Damian Williams, who also left Arkansas earlier this year to join the Trojans.

Today, a subpoena was issued for Houston Nutt’s hard drive. An attorney for the plaintiff said he “wants to examine any e-mail correspondence between Nutt and Prewett, as well as any e-mail from their computers regarding the Mustain situation,” reports the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

Matt Hayes of The Sporting News writes, “It’s time for Houston Nutt to go. Right now — before the long, hot days of summer and before the steaming stench of a soap opera further damages the Arkansas football program. As much as it pains me to say this, as much as I loathe whiny players and meddling little league moms and reactionary responses, Nutt must take a buyout and walk away for the good of the program. Too much damage has been done already.”

Arkansas Democrat Gazette Sports Editor Wally Hall notes, “If an independent investigation had been conducted as it should have, the drama of the past five months might have never happened.”

The issue now is what does the UA Board of Trustees do. With the President and the Chancellor of the flagship Univerity as named defendants, it seems that the Board is going to have to intervene in a siutation they never intended to touch: the future of Houston Nutt.

The plaintiff, while clearly peeved at Chancellor White for not taking this e-mail thing more seriously, really wants Nutt out of the picture. Although, he doesn’t seem to mind if Chancellor White followed him.

The e-mail trail, as exposed by Arkansas Times Lifestyle Editor Jim Harris, leads to Prewett, Houston Nutt’s wife Diana and brother Danny.  As a result, there is some appearance that Nutt knew about it all along, and certainly well before Chancellor White called him about it on January 5th, almost 1 month after the original e-mail was sent by Prewett.

What’s the solution? Nutt attorney Byron Freeland thinks the lawsuit will be dismissed quickly.  Certainly, Terry’s legal arguments are thin and there’s a wealth of public policy arguments against allowing a lawsuit of this kind to continue.

That said, this is Arkansas state court, where plaintiff’s are, more often than not, given a chance to conduct some discovery into their claims.  If that is allowed here, it’s the most damaging because Terry’s lawyers will get a chance to depose Nutt, brother Danny, White, Prewett, and just about anyone else they can connect to this matter.

From the U of A’s perspective, that can never be allowed to happen because eventually, excerpts of those depositions will be attached to pleadings and they’ll become part of the public record.

One thing is for sure, if a Motion of Dismiss is denied, the U of A’s got a real problem on its hands.  Many would argue it already does.