Deflation-gate

Definitely a win for both. Class actions are objected to as producing big bucks for lawyers and small bucks for consumers. No doubt about that. But the typical class action law suit allows recovery in cases were it would be cost prohibitive for a single consumer to sue for anything at all. In situations where that is not the case, consumers can usually opt out of the class action process.The alternative is a sometimes stacked arbitration process from which there is no recourse if the ruling is unfair and in which the party being sued is responsible for choosing the arbitrator. Supposedly arbitration is cheaper, but if there is any significant money at stake, you'll still need a lawyer because the opposition will certainly be represented. Maybe the record keeping provision would be helpful in exposing that kind of abuse.

As many as possible. I was involved with one patent case that was heard at the Supreme Court. I am not going to reveal enough details to allow figuring out who the client was. The head of the intellectual property section of our firm used every resource he could find to encourage influential folks from academia and industry to file amicus briefs on behalf of issues related to our client. Sometimes lawyers who practice in a particular area are chomping at the bit to file briefs and need little urging. For example when an import defendants rights case is before the supreme court, you can normally count on the ABA, groups of law professors, and defendant's attorney groups to file briefs.While this is not yet a Supreme Court case, re-hearings do face long odds in most courts and it behooves Brady's team to get as many amicus briefs as possible in front of the judges as they are deciding on whether to rehear. The NFL can probably rely on the long odds against getting a rehearing.

I wouldn't make too much of this. Lawyers are generally busy folks, and writing an appellate brief is a substantial effort, with the quality of work bearing directly on the lawyer's reputation. The hours spent on the brief cannot be charged to the client and more than likely, in the case of a request for rehearing, that effort will be of zero effect.. Lawyers do perform pro-bono work, but they normally have their own ideas about where that time should be spent. Brady's team can increase the likelihood that someone will take on the project by doing at least some of the work to get lawyers together to work jointly on the brief. I don't see anything wrong with that. What questions would you ask about their current motives? Do you think being asked means that they were not as outraged or concerned as you believed them to be? You have some sense about these things?Because I do not practice in this area, I have no sense of where this judgment sits compared to other cases, and no way to estimate what some judge I've never been in front of might consider important. We do have a small sample of the judges on the panel and currently they have voted 2-1. Maybe the make up of the rest of the panel is dissimilar. Who knows.In the areas in which I do practice, my own history of trying to predict the outcome of appellate cases is rather dismal. A coin flip would be better. With the exception of patent cases that go before the Supreme Court, my own predictions are correct less than half of the time. In situations where I am involved in the case, my prediction track record is even lower. On the other hand, I have had nearly perfect success with Supreme Court patent cases by using the rule that the SC always does the opposite of what the patent attorney briefs ask for. I cannot recall a single patent case in the past decade that did not produce a result that the Patent Bar Briefs argued against.Perhaps you can do better. But if you cannot, that's no reflection on you. Nobody is real good at predicting what a federal appellate court will do.

I think my question has merit.They still wrote the brief after being asked, and apparently did what you consider an excellent job in some cases. They must have some motive for writing the brief. So if they could be suspected of not writing the for the reasons you initially mentioned, what would other folks suspect to be their motive. In fact, this is not just about some random person. You said that having to be asked lowers your own opinion.The vast majority of appellate briefs are solicited. In really huge cases in front of the Supreme Court, particularly after cert is granted, more are unsolicited. Your estimate was a fifty percent chance. That's about 500 times as large as the odds you are quoting for the typical petition.How many of those petitions are you familiar with? I admit that I've never read a rehearing petition for anything other than the Federal Circuit, but I'm not speculating beyond saying that rehearings are historically rarely granted. At least when you opine on the Supreme Court you have some familiarity with the personalities. My guess is that you know nothing about this particular court and even less regarding the relative merit of this petition and those others.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

If you say that some circumstance calls motive into question, what would be the best way for me to figure out what your reasoning is. I think I asked an appropriate question. It appears that you would rather fight about how literally I interpreted your question.Let me provide an alternative view regarding motivation. The motivation of most amicus briefs can be questioned. Most of them are by parties with an interest in the question, and many times that interest is not purely academic. In many cases lawyers will be arguing in favor of the law being interpreted in their clients benefit. Certainly, one might suspect that a union will submit a brief favoring union over management for example. One would want to read the brief and see if that were the case. If that were my suspicion, I think my opinion would not be enhanced by knowing that they submitted the brief with or without solicitation.I'd be less likely to question a brief from academia on the same basis. Did you have an opinion about the outcome of the appellate court hearing before that began?For some reason this seems to be a topic that you take personally. In this case my initial question was intended to simply probe your opinion. It seems that few of my posts on the subject have failed to provoke a personal response, and that post in particularly that disagree with you on any aspect create even more emotion. There is nothing personal at stake here.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I have no evidence for this one way or the other, but I've always assumed that Goodell was doing what the owners want with regards to pursuing this matter. My reasoning is that from a pure PR perspective it would have been best to let this blow over without a hearing and that a decision based on any long term view would have to be supported by ownership.Again, I've no facts to back that up, but it makes sense to me.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I've expressed my own opinion. If it is not the same as the one expressed in the article, that's fine too.

That's okay, too. My comment is not a rebuttal of the articles premise. It expresses a related but distinct idea. But for the record, by pursuing the matter, what I am referring to is the fact that the owners appear to want a tough, management favorable punishment system, and that they negotiated for exactly that in the protective bargaining agreement. Goodell has by now, had several opportunities to drop the matter, but has taken none of them.That particular line of argument might be correct regardless of whether or not I agree with the article. As I'm saying for the second time, I'm making a completely different point. Since you seem to want me to comment about the article, as to the point about orchestrating a ruling of guilty, I find that a bit silly. (And again that's not a comment on Brady's guilt or innocence). The CBA, as written, allows Goodell the final say if he so elects, accordingly, little orchestration was even needed. Goodell could have listened to anything, met with anyone, and reviewed anything short of a confession by the Patriots owner that he deflated the footballs, and pronounced the same conclusion.

Of course that is correct. However, the agreement does put set some boundaries on what might be considered fair and unfair. Perhaps ultimately, what Goodell did will be found to be unfair. However IMO, it will be difficult/impossible to argue successfully that the mere fact that Goodell was the hearing officer is outside of the agreement or that it was not what the parties meant when the agreement was signed. Perhaps that portion of the agreement is something that the players ought to take up with their representation.Generally speaking, the decider of a case is the one who gets to assign the weight to the facts, decide what's credible and not credible, and more importantly, to decide who to believe and who to disbelieve. An appellate court is not supposed to second guess any of that weighing/credibility assigning process. Accordingly, the choice of decider in a case is an enormously huge thing to ... (trying to chose words carefully to avoid a fight) let's just say 'leave as the choice is left in the text of the collective bargaining agreement.' Your assessment may have changed, but the fact is that nothing that you might have seen in the media has actually affected Brady's chances in the least. If what you see in the media does not come from folks who have actually practiced before that particular court, then what you see is opinion probably not worth using in a probability calculation.Who is writing about this stuff nowadays? Aren't most folks watching hockey, basketball, or baseball?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Of course not. Surely, they have more sense than to bother with that argument. Yes, and things you continued to say after I pointed out the text in Article 46. It's nearly impossible to tell when you've dropped or conceded an issue. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Tom Brady Accepts Deflategate Suspension, Won't Appeal to Supreme Court | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats, and Rumors | Bleacher Report

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After the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied Tom Brady's request for a rehearing of his Deflategate case, the New England Patriots quarterback decided against using his last legal option available.

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Statement from Brady:

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I'm very grateful for the overwhelming support I've received from Mr. Kraft, the Kraft family, coach Belichick, my coaches and teammates, the NFLPA, my agents, my loving family and most of all, our fans. It has been a challenging 18 months and I have made the difficult decision to no longer proceed with the legal process. I'm going to work hard to be the best player I can be for the New England Patriots and I look forward to having the opportunity to return to the field this fall.

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Edited by NoNukes, : Add link.

I think that Roger has done what the league wants. The exception, of course, is when a particular owner is on the bad end of a Roger ruling. For example, Jerry Jones was pretty upset about losing his running back, but I doubt that the rest of the owners (with some exceptions) had any problem with that.However, under Goodell, the league's ability to deal out punishments is severely messed up because of lack of standards. Gronk's punishment is a prime example. Gronkowski gets a one-game suspension for a deliberate, non-football whacking of another player, and now it becomes difficult to discipline players who are simply careless. My guess is that if the other suspensions had come first, Gronk would have gotten a longer suspension.Not surprised that Goodell is staying. Maybe if the next TV contract is lower, the owners will scrutinize him a bit harder.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.