Deflation-gate

What I said was that the use of the term arbitrator is irrelevant and that the NFLPA's use of the term meant nothing. I'm blasting you trying to insist that the process is arbitration. That does not seem to be the NFLPA's position.Actually, you seem to be the one saying that an organization that agreed to let Goodell decide these cases is incompetent, not me. And if there is one thing that is clearly not ambiguous, it is that the current agreement does allows Goodell to be a hearing officer. Well no. I address that issue separately. I maintain my point that the NFLPA cannot claim that they did not agree to a punishment process that includes the Commissioner himself serving as hearing officer. Wrong meaning what Percy? I see three possible questions here.1. Whether the NFLPA understood and agreed to the procedure.
2. Whether the procedure is legally enforceable
3. Whether the procedure is fair without regard to 1 and 2.It seems to me that you are making statements about all three of the above. My response is that they definitely agreed to the procedure, which is something I think would be taken into account when considering if such an agreement is enforceable. As to point 3, yeah I see that the agreement really is not fair to the player involved, but that may not affect either 1 or 2. It might mean that the NFLPA accepted a bad bargain that perhaps allowed them to gain some other benefit. That's the NFL's position. But even if the review is process, it is still possible for the judge to over the egregiously bad fact finding as a misuse of the process. Also if the facts, even taken as the NFL found them do not support conclusions reach, the judge can make rulings on that basis. But that might just send the issue back to the NFL for review. The agreement does not give NFLPA any ability to challenge the picking of hearing officers and explicitly states that the Comissioner can be a hearing officer. And oh, look, that's exactly what happened.Here is a link to an article that discusses this situation in some length. The author talks about fairness and legal sufficiency. I think he does a fair job and I largely agree with his reasoning. He highly recommends that the NFL use an impartial arbitrator.I note that this is an article written prior to Goodell's affirming of the punishment. It's pretty clear that the author was well aware that the Commissioner or a commissioner designee was going to do the review. 403 Forbidden Edited by NoNukes, : Some re-editing at 12:17. Not too much.

Complete crap. This set of definitions is totally made up and does not reflect even a lay understanding of the law.

Really, Percy So who posted this? (Emphasis added by me) And yet quite clearly the NFLPA did indeed agree to a process in which Goodell can be the final decider. The procedure has been part of the CBA for about four years. Anyone can read it. If you have an argument that Section 46 does not allow the Commissioner to serve as hearing officer, you have yet to present it. So far you've at best expressed that it should not be allowed. I have at least provide you with a lawyer's interpretation that agrees with my own. Quite frankly, the text is crystal clear. Isn't that what they would claim about every case where section 46 was used? There is nothing to suggest that they are correct. Yeah, I do discount this as anything more than a briefing position. It's garbage. If I recall correctly, he claims to be stating the process given by the league office. Perhaps he erred. He also pointed out the major distinction. The Missouri case was with regards to an employee who signed a contract of adhesion (take it or leave it). In this case, the players had substantial bargaining power and signed a negotiated contract. In short, the author understands exactly what the player's signed even if their lawyers now claim ignorance or to have a different understanding.

Circumstantial evidence - Wikipedia

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Circumstantial evidence is evidence that relies on an inference to connect it to a conclusion of factlike a fingerprint at the scene of a crime. By contrast, direct evidence supports the truth of an assertion directlyi.e., without need for any additional evidence or inference.

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That is the case with circumstantial evidence. Circumstantial evidence may have the quality that a single piece of evidence does not establish a fact, but that does not characterize it. DNA evidence of paternity is circumstantial evidence. What characterizes circumstantial evidence is the need to draw an inference. That inference may been strong or quite weak.And it is not like we have not discussed this definition before. Generally speaking, the only evidence that is non-circumstantual is eye witness testimony form someone observing the event in question. In fact circumstantial evidence is very often more reliable than direct evidence. Circumstantial evidence tells us that the sun is powered by fusion.

What's amusing about this definition is that the judge actually used the phrase 'evidence directly linking', while the head line used the term direct evidence. The judge did not use the term 'direct evidence' (and would not have) because that term already has a legal meaning.The only reason for changing the meaning of direct evidence in this way is to try to save the head line and perhaps your post. I see no point in doing that.Let's be realistic. Would the judge really discount circumstantial evidence that required an inference? Would the judge really expect the lawyers to be chastened by the fact that their evidence was not direct? Is that really what you think the judges position was? Or was the problem something else other than the fact that an inference was required?I don't believe your definitions are the least bit helpful even if they are how lay people use the terms. If the headline is going to be accurate, it should have reported what the judge actually meant. The judge is not a layperson and he was not speaking to laypeople.ABE:
Illustrating example:Let's say for example that some witness testified that he saw a QB let air out of footballs. Would you say that a deduction is required to interpret that evidence or an inference?Let's say instead that one of the equipment managers texted a note to that same QB thanking him for the really nice payola for deflating the footballs. Would a deduction or an inference be required to interpret the evidence?Well one of those is direct and the other indirect. But I sincerely doubt that the judge would have any reason to complain about either of them. Edited by NoNukes, : add example

I understand the argument. But the facts are that Article 46 says what it says, and the NFLPA signed on to it.Section 46 is the process by which the league office punishes players. In exactly what situation did the NFLPA think it would be okay for the Commissioner to be a hearing officer? Why did they concede this kind of power to the commissioner in any circumstance?I think section 46 means exactly what it says. If the player's position is that the clause was clearly unlawful, and thus they ignored it during negotiations, well, I have seen that tactic before. And it is extremely risky. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. Again, "against all sense of fair" may not be the legal threshold here. But first you have to get past that hurdle of Vincent actually making the initial ruling and Goodell doing the review.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Of course those things have not been established. They are examples intended to illustrate concepts such as direct evidence, indirect evidence, deduction and inference.Wasn't that clear in my post?

Direct evidence for Y means witness testimony that Y occurred. Nothing else, not even a video tape of Y is not direct evidence that Y occurred. It really is that simple.On the other hand, it is possible to have circumstantial evidence that directly links the defendant to the murder. Fingerprints, witnesses seeing the defendant running away from the scene after some load bang bangs, etc are all indirect evidence.Let's also note that when asked about the evidence, that the NFL did not sit there with a thumbs up their butt, but instead gave an answer. It is pretty clear to me, and apparently to you, that the judge was motivating settlement and not telling the NFL he planned how to rule. What the judge cannot do is admit prejudging the case prior to the actual hearing. All of which indicates that there was far more going on than the headline admits.I understand that Pats fans are hanging on every word they hear looking for hints that the case is over and Brady has won, but that has not happened yet. Don't make the mistake of reading only one side's briefs and assuming that you know how the case is going to go.Further, it is not just my theory that the players association signed off on the current process. That seems to be what other lawyers seem to think the CBA says, and is the basis for articles saying that the NFL might win if review is limited to process. Even Brady's brief seems to acknowledge that such can be read from the agreement, which is why they cite to other law.And small wonder. The agreement says the following:

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Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Commissioner may serve as hearing officer in any appeal under Section 1(a) of this Article at his discretion.

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At his [the Commissioner's] discretion. Not in 'consultation with the players' and not when the player fails to perceive unfairness. Yeah, that does make the Commissioner pretty powerful but apparently that is exactly what the owners wanted with regard to player punishment. And the players let that happen. And just as Brady does not want to set a precedent of rolling over, the NFL does not want to give up the power to punish players for conduct detrimental to the league.As for Article 43, the very first line of Article 46 says: So article 43 is simply not an issue.You asked me about the situation where I got a bad review from my boss and whether an appeal process where the same boss reviewed it would be unfair. I don't believe you responded to my asking about my bosses boss instead doing the appeal. Isn't that the way corporations usually handle such things? Unless you are a member of the teamster's union and you've got a negotiated labor agreement, don't companies generally handle grievances internally? I've never gotten a bad review but I've written plenty of them for others but I've never been involved in an arbitration.Is that fair? Is there really some applicable law that would make supervisors spend more time sitting in arbitration meetings than they do supervising engineering work?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

The commissioner is not an arbitrator at all. There is simply no way to call the section 46 process an arbitration in the strictly legal sense, because it is not such a thing. The CBA does not require arbitration when the league punishes a player. It also does not require arbitration when the coach decides to bench a player or a team decides to cut a player.You can call the process arbitration if you want, but it is not really any such thing. Or we might say that one side cannot admit that they signed a bad bargain that compromises the rights of the players to file a grievance and hopes that the court will bail them out. But, yeah, when you read the players' brief you read arguments for players that make the NFL look like ca-ca. Big woop.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Calling it obvious is not an argument, and you are ducking the question, which I will repeat:In which situations, Percy? The agreement says that the Commissioner can be the hearing officer at his discretion in any appeal. Why would that be allowed at all? Why is that statement in the CBA at all? When would it be considered fair?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

This is not an admission by the NFL. This is a characterization by the players of the prior cited cases.

Not everyone, Percy. When people need to give a detailed legal analysis they do make the distinction and I cited one such analysis here. For other purposes, the name does not matter so much as long as the fact that the process is completely described in article 46. If instead you want to suggest that the process does not follow arbitration rules, the answer is that the process is defined outside of an arbitration process.Strictly speaking it is an article 46 administrative process for applying punishment. It is pretty much the same process you would experience if your kid got punished by the public school system. You would have a hearing in the superintendent's office and not some outside arbitration. Your recourse after that would be to file a law suit in court unless the school system itself agreed to arbitration. It is silly to pretend that people don't experience punishments under systems that are very similar to the one here. And in this case, the players agreed to the system before hand.Just to save a second post. I acknowledge here that the you were correct that the NFL says that the other cases involve a neutral arbitrator. But the point is that this case is not really arbitration. The NFL is not admitting that the process is illegal, but that it is an internal process by which the league punishes players and that the process is completely described in the CBA.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

These question are all ones to which each side has answers. Again, there is a reason why we don't resolve cases just by reading one side's briefs.

I disagree with this characterization, which in essence considers what happened as if it were a broken arbitration scheme.The NFL's position is that the section 46 allows the NFL to punish players without arbitration involving an outside arbitrator, and that the player's attempt to point out that the NFL did not actually use an arbitrator is beside the point. In my opinion, the CBA very clearly allows exactly that procedure. You on the other hand cannot seem to give me any explanation why the words giving the Commissioner the discretion to pick himself as the hearing officer for any appeal would ever be applicable. That suggests to me that you are just won't accept what you can read, essentially setting all of those words to have no meaning at all.Of course I don't consider section 46 to be an arbitration procedure. So I would use stronger language and say that section 46 does not require arbitration in order to apply league punishment to a player. The player instead gets an appeal hearing with his lawyer in front of someone designated by the Commissioner if not the Commissioner himself. There may be no precedent for that simply because the players never signed an agreement supporting the current procedure.And again, the above interpretation of the CBA is not just my opinion. Any of the legal commentators who indicate that the NFL has a strong case as long as the judge rules on process, must reason along similar lines.

Seriously, Percy. That is not analysis. That's you making stuff up out of whole cloth. If it is analysis, show me from what you are analyzing other than your own opinion.You suggest that an effective way of expressing limiting things to clear cut bad hit scenarios is to say that the Commission can act as a hearing officer in any appeal at his own discretion? That's ridiculous on its face. The text gives the Commissioner unlimited discretion and it would have been a simple matter to reference situations or laws that provided rights that the player's did not waive.And article 46 itself is not limited to such matters. It covers essentially everything that might result in the league rather than individual teams punishing a player.Absent some protective law that says otherwise, there is nothing illegal about the players waiving some existing legal remedy or procedure in writing in a negotiated contract. And I don't see any reasonable interpretation of the Article 46 other than that. If there were some limits to the Commissioner's discretion, the reasonable thing to do would be to have at least hinted at them into the agreement. Instead we find that no such limitations are hinted at or expressed in the text.