Heard in the courtroom

Ho Hum.



Roger Goodell, not Tom Brady, the one who should be scrambling over DeflateGate

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thursday, August 20, 2015, 12:50 AM

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[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images

Roger Goodell and the NFL may not have the strongest case against Tom Brady, but under the current collective bragaining agreement, that may not matter.

Maybe in the end it turns out that Tom Brady lost his big fight with Roger Goodell before it ever began, before the air came out of the footballs in Foxborough and before Ted Wells’ now famous report, before Goodell suspended Brady for DeflateGate and then upheld his own suspension of Brady on appeal.
Maybe Brady really lost to Goodell as soon as DeMaurice Smith, the head of the players union in the National Football League, signed off on the league’s current collective bargaining agreement, one that gives Goodell more power than the Patriot Act.
A lot is made every time U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman, who acts like someone who ought to be a commissioner of something in sports, hauls lawyers on both sides of this into his courtroom and slaps them around. But if there is one stubborn fact about courtrooms such as Berman’s, it is that you can go broke trying to guess what a judge is going to do off tough things he says.
On Wednesday, as Berman continued to push for a settlement in this case — if not a settlement of the controversy that has now been going on for seven months — he went right at one of the NFL’s core arguments, that somehow Brady and his alleged co-conspirators with those underinflated footballs in the first half of the AFC Championship Game between the Patriots and Colts had somehow launched an assault on the integrity of the sport.
Oh, sure. Goodell has suggested that four games is an appropriate punishment for an offense comparable to the use of performance-enhancing drugs. From the start, it has been an idea so dumb you’re still surprised anybody ever brought it into the light.
“How is (DeflateGate) equal to steroid use?” Berman asked NFL lawyer Daniel Nash.

At least (Judge Richard M.) Berman, who has become the real star of this reality series, took the notion of the integrity of the sport being the issue here and rolled it into a spitball on Wednesday. He’s absolutely right.

“They both go to the integrity of the game,” Nash said.
“Well, everything goes to the integrity of the game,” Berman said.
When there is an exchange like that, one that goes to the heart of the league’s case against Brady — he probably did it! — people get the idea that Berman is going to be the one to adjudicate the merits of the NFL’s case against Tom Brady, and vacate Brady’s suspension. Only that is not Berman’s job here, even though you wish it were.
His job is to judge whether or not Goodell had the right to do what he did to Brady, according to the full and sweeping — and occasionally crazy — powers signed over to him by the players’ union. But even if Berman sides with Goodell in the end, all that really happens is that the NFL commissioner manages to stop a four-case losing streak in court, which might be a world’s record for a guy with a job like his.
Brady? He would officially become a martyr to his fans, or anybody else who thinks he got railroaded here by a flawed report, and a commissioner determined to use all of the powers granted him by the union, no matter how much that hurts him and hurts his brand.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] John Samora/AP

Well, this now seems awkward.

Still, Judge Richard M. Berman presses on, continues to do everything except hire skywriters pushing for a settlement, a resolution that he described on Wednesday as “rational and logical.” But by now he has to know that turf wars such as this one rarely are rational or logical, and usually about saving face when they make it as far as this one has, all the way to him.
“I just finished a case where the judge basically forced a settlement by ordering us in court on a regular basis and forcing us all to sit until we settled,” this newspaper’s legal analyst, New York attorney Tom Harvey, said on Wednesday. “I believe this is going in the same direction. The uncertainty of whether Brady is available for the first game puts a lot of pressure on everyone, and this judge knows it. This case will be settled and settled soon.”
You just wonder how. If it is true, as has been reported, that the league won’t allow Brady to cop to some lesser charge of obstruction, you wonder what possible compromise can be reached here. Brady will never admit that he had anything to do with the air coming out of those footballs. Goodell, it seems, will never admit that he did anything wrong by commissioning his own report, punishing Brady because of it, hearing Brady’s appeal himself and then upholding his own suspension.
And here we are, less than a month from the start of the regular season, the league wanting to direct everybody’s attention to the action on the field even though every week or so, the league’s representatives and the union’s representatives are getting lectured by a judge who clearly knows two things:
1.) How weak the league’s case against Brady is the more we learn about it.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] Steve Helber/AP

With the NFL opener about a month away, Tom Brady's fate is still not decided.

2.) How strong collectively bargained agreements are, and not just in professional sports.
At least Berman, who has become the real star of this reality series, took the notion of the integrity of the sport being the issue here and rolled it into a spitball on Wednesday. He’s absolutely right, just about everything in the NFL goes to the integrity of the game, all the way back to this commissioner’s original decision last year to suspend Ray Rice for only two games after Rice punched out his then-fiancee in an Atlantic City elevator.
You look at a moment like that and once again ask yourself how much damage was done to the NFL’s integrity by that decision, how much of a suspension Goodell — applying the same standards to himself that he has to DeflateGate — should have handed down to himself.
Now Goodell is back in court because of another decision, and there are days when you can’t decide who’s really on trial here. Sometimes you even wonder whose cell phone might be more interesting here, the commissioner’s or the quarterback’s.


Even if Berman feels he has no choice but to uphold the arbitration finding out of sheer deference to arbitration findings in general, he will do so reluctantly and holding his nose in the process.  


He plainly sees the gross miscarriage of justice that has gone on here.  He plainly sees that the Wells Report* is about the January 18 game only, and yet Ted Wells' "conclusion" of "general (not specific) awareness" on Brady's part has no connection to the January 18 game whatsoever.   Wells did NOT tie Brady's alleged "general awareness" to the January 18 game.  The judge sees that the dots do not connect. 


He plainly sees also that the NFL keeps moving the goal line on Brady.  First, the league touted Wells as "independent" on multiple occasions.  Then they had to admit he was not "independent" since NFL General Counsel Pash edited the report before Wells released it, but yet the NFL would not allow Pash to be a witness in the appeal hearing (what a joke).  Then the NFL said it does not matter that Wells was not independent.  After promising that the "investigator" was independent, they now claim they were never required to provide someone who was independent.  My God, what country are we in here, Iran?  Shit like this is why former Dolphins O-Line coach Jim Turner is suing Ted Wells and his firm for defamation for Wells tailoring his "investigation" in bullygate to suit the people who paid him $Millions - the NFL.  If you listen to Turner's interview, he might just win his suit against Wells.


The judge also plainly sees that Goodell has a history of simply making it up as he goes along.  First, Brady was suspended for "general awareness".  Then after the kangaroo court "appeal", Brady was part of a "scheme" according to Goodell.  The judge is just laughing at that one.

The judge further thinks Goodell's comparison of missing a fraction of a psi to use of PEDs and masking agents is something only a moron would write.  Its pretty obvious.


This farce of a "scandal" has gotten so bad we have now reached the point where we strangely have the following people saying things in support of Tom Brady:


-  Terrell Suggs
-  Antonio Cromartie
-  Richard Sherman

LOL.


I mean, come on.  How much garbage from the NFL are you willing to swallow just to "get" Tom Brady because you don't like it that he wears his passion on his sleeve and your team can't beat him on the field? 

Sad.  Really sad.

Did I just get a post deleted here?

guppy wrote:The NFL's case appears solely based upon the sanctity of Goodell's judgment -- which is trusted by almost no one anywhere.

Except for the owners and every player who signed the 2011 CBA and every player who's signed a contract since then.

I heard a great story today. Bradys next thing will be that he, and all the "People that matter" never wanted the CBA. They were out voted by the 80% of the union that makes minimum wage and didn't want to lose a paycheck.
Good union man Brady (Who tried to keep the union uninvolved until the Wells Report came out) didn't want this plantation system CBA, but the ignorant field niggers screwed the whole thing up.

George1963 wrote:Did I just get a post deleted here?

Unless you did accidentally... it was NOT removed on this end.

Admin wrote:

George1963 wrote:Did I just get a post deleted here?

Unless you did accidentally... it was NOT removed on this end.

Probably did. Hit preview and never hit send. I do it all the time.

George1963 wrote:

Admin wrote:

George1963 wrote:Did I just get a post deleted here?

Unless you did accidentally... it was NOT removed on this end.

Probably did. Hit preview and never hit send. I do it all the time.

LOL, there are a few on here that should do that every time.

How about the Washington Post's take?  Interesting, no?


Roger Goodell’s insistence on acting as emperor makes the NFL vulnerable to a legal smackdown

By [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] August 21    

In DeflateGate there has been a weird inversion: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell set out to expose Tom Brady, and instead he has exposed himself and the entire league. It was at first baffling to watch Goodell commit such acts of overreach. It has since become merely revealing of a catastrophic arrogance. In going after Brady and the New England Patriots on such a flimsy premise as the inflation of footballs, Goodell has steadily etched out his real character and attitudes, and in doing so he has bared himself and the league to searing judicial review.

The NFL’s entire legal argument in [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] over the past few weeks is that this commissioner’s powers are so unlimited that even a federal judge must bow to him. NFL attorney Dan Nash said on Goodell’s behalf during a hearing this past week, “The findings of the commissioner are entitled to deference.” Well, that’s rich. It was Goodell and the NFL who brought this idiotic case into Berman’s courtroom in the first place. And now they’re telling Berman he has no right to rule in it.

The Brady case teaches us a lot about labor laws and how the NFL regards itself as above them. It’s about basic procedural fairness, whether Goodell has the right to inflict a vindictive and capricious punishment on Brady based on no evidence at all — it’s not even clear the game balls in the AFC championship game were deflated by a few whiffs of air — simply because he wants to prove he can make the league’s best quarterback kiss his ring. If Brady can be treated this way, then so can you or any other employee. That’s the heart of the case and why it’s important.

The NFL has long relied on procedural law to cover up its corruptions. Under its collective bargaining agreement with the NFL Players Association, all arguments go to arbitration rather than to court, with the commissioner as the judge. Players surrender a certain amount of due process in favor of efficiency: Arbitration is expeditious and is meant to avoid, ironically, endless court cases. It’s also more secretive. Things tend to stay sealed. Judges historically have been extremely reluctant to overturn arbitration, even when there are errors in a case, because arbitration by its very definition is meant to keep matters out of court. That’s what Goodell and the NFL lawyers counted on.
What they didn’t count on was a judge who refuses to accept the premise that he is supposed to shut up and rubber stamp. And who has decided to pour some sunshine on the entire process and give us a delightful lesson in the labor principles at stake. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] of the NFL in a hearing this week demonstrated that arbitration is not meant to preclude judicial review or to force an employee to surrender to the whims of power-crazed managers.

While Goodell has sweeping powers to issue player discipline under the CBA, Berman made it clear he does not have the right to willfully misstate and mislead, gin up phony investigations based on pseudo-science and then issue draconian four-game suspensions simply because he’s furious Brady and the New England Patriots don’t say, “All hail to the emperor.”
“There has to be some basic process of fairness that needs to be followed,” Berman said.

Time after time, Berman issued observations from the bench that made the NFL attorneys’ shoulders curl. He called the league’s lack of proof that anything was deflated in the AFC championship game “a conspicuous absence.”
Perhaps most embarrassingly, he publicly busted Goodell for his irrational twisting of highly equivocal evidence into the assertion that Brady masterminded an illegal “scheme” that was on par with steroids. “A quantum leap,” Berman scoffed.


There are narrow grounds for overturning arbitration, but this case appears to meet plenty of them. The judge can throw it out if he finds Brady’s rights were prejudiced by corruption, fraud or misconduct. Or if he finds Goodell was evidently partial or was arbitrary and capricious. Or if he finds that Brady wasn’t given proper notice of what he was accused of, so he could mount a proper defense.

It’s not a slam dunk that Berman will vacate Brady’s suspension, but he has already dealt the NFL so many humiliating public rebukes that it’s hard to see him ruling differently. He clearly believes this is a case of petty, martinet-like behavior and it doesn’t belong in court. As Houston-based attorney and NFL blogger Stephanie Stradley observes, “I don’t know what Judge Berman’s stylistic preferences are, but if I went to law school, got awesome grades, worked worked worked, went through the process to get named as a federal court judge, decided many actually important cases, and then was asked to make a decision in a case that should have been settled that is this profoundly dumb, I would torch the NFL in flames that would make Hades look like a refrigerator.”

The “why is he doing this?” question still lingers; Goodell’s motive in pursuing Brady so hard with such a weak case is the fascinating question. The answer seems to be based in personality, a vain self-conception and tone deafness that make him incapable of admitting mistakes or cutting his losses. He has staked his personal power and credibility on the legal argument that if he wants to suspend Brady for life and fine him a billion dollars, his authority still supersedes that of a federal judge, who has no right to interfere.

It’s also likely that Goodell pressed this case because he is so accustomed to getting preferential treatment and political cover in civic arenas. States, cities and most of Congress are such panting NFL fans that they are willing to put up with any amount of extortionist behavior from the league, which demands massive public funding for stadiums and all kinds of tax breaks or threatens to move franchises. The league has long behaved as if it’s entitled to special carve-outs, exceptions and protections simply because of its popularity. It’s used to operating with impunity and without federal interference, whether doling out painkillers in violation of Drug Enforcement Administration regulations or utterly ignoring OSHA requirements on reporting workplace injuries.

But for once, Berman has not provided the NFL with cover. Instead, he has highlighted this fundamental attitude by the NFL, that the league is so special that even federal law should be bent in favor of it. The NFL by Goodell’s definition is almost a separate country. It makes up its own interpretation of laws — those it doesn’t ignore altogether. It even makes up its own science. By acting like an emperor instead of a commissioner, Goodell has exposed himself and the entire organization as overripe for a slap-down by a strong federal hand.