New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady (12) passes against the New York Jets during the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, October 25, 2015, in Foxborough, Mass.
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Tom Brady and the New England Patriots may be undefeated on the field this season, but the NFL and Commissioner Roger Goodell still loom as opponents in the courtroom thanks to the league’s decision to appeal the Deflategate ruling.
The timetable for the appeal hearing allows for the possibility that, should the league win and Brady’s suspension be reinstated, and should the Patriots make it back to the Super Bowl, the quarterback might actually have to sit out the championship game.
The league’s claims in the filing that federal Judge Richard Berman’s decision can’t stand. Berman called Goodell out in the decision for having “his own brand of industrial justice”.
The suspension was “premised upon several significant legal deficiencies” including the failure to notify Brady of potential penalties, Berman wrote in his opinion, noting that an arbitrator’s factual findings are generally not open to judicial challenge. Arguments in the appeal are expected “as early as the week of February 1”. It says the scheme “was devised to avoid detection by game officials”.
The league brought the scandal to Berman’s Manhattan courtroom immediately once Goodell upheld Brady’s four-game suspension, blasting the quarterback for arranging the destruction of his cellphone and its almost 10,000 messages just before he was interviewed for the NFL probe.
The National Football League’s collective bargaining agreement with the NFL Players Association affords the NFL Commissioner broad authority to impose discipline for conduct “detrimental to the integrity of, or public confidence in, the game of professional football”.
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“His decision not only walked through all the evidence he considered and credited in painstaking detail, but also explained at length his efforts to determine how the CBA should be applied to the unprecedented situation before him”, the lawyers wrote. “Where lower courts have committed a similar error, appellate courts have not hesitated to reverse”.
