NY District Court Lifts Suspension on Patriots Quarterback Tom Brady (with Lofchie Comment)
U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman lifted the four-game suspension on New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady pursuant to Section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. 185, and Section 10 of the Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. 10.
Judge Berman cited Kaplan v. Alfred Dunhill of London, Inc.: The deference due an arbitrator [by the courts] does not extend so far as to require a district court to countenance, much less confirm, an award obtained without the requisites of fairness or due process. Regarding the specifics of the NFL's due process, Judge Berman found that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's arbitral decisions had numerous legal deficiencies, including (i) inadequate notice to Brady of both his potential discipline (four-game suspension) and his alleged misconduct, (ii) denial of the opportunity for Brady to examine one of two lead investigators, namely NFL Executive Vice President and General Counsel, and (iii) denial of equal access to investigative files, including witness interview notes. Additionally, the judge implied there had been actual dishonesty on the part of the NFL Commissioner Goodell (at footnote 26), since Goodell asserted that his only knowledge of the case was based on the information in the Wells report and yet made public statements that were inconsistent with the information in the Wells report. In his concluding remarks, the judge suggested that the absence of due process evidenced by the NFL's suspension of Brady was affirmatively un-American, and observed that due process is not merely a required element of the NFL's collective bargaining agreement, but also a fundamental attribute of American criminal and civil justice systems.
In light of these various abuses, Judge Berman ordered Tom Brady's four-game suspension to be vacated, effective immediately.
Commentary
Although the judge's decision was based entirely on numerous procedural deficiencies in the NFL's suspension process, and despite his observation that "an arbitrator's factual findings are generally not open to judicial challenge, and we accept the facts as the arbitrator found them," the language of the decision indicated that the judge was extremely skeptical about the substantive basis of the NFL's suspension. For example, he described the substance of the case as involving "allegedly deflated footballs," and virtually every reference he made to the NFL's investigation was preceded by the adjective "independent" in quotes. In a later section of the report (at page 7), Judge Berman highlighted the NFL's admission that scientific consultants conceded the data could not "provide a [certain] basis for determining that the balls were underinflated." He also observed (at footnote 3) that, when the Patriots played with footballs that all parties agreed were fully inflated, they outscored the Colts by an even greater margin than when playing with the "allegedly" underinflated footballs.