As the NFL’s defamation case against Tom Brady comes to a head, it looks like the tide might finally be turning in the Patriots quarterback’s favor.
Though Roger Goodell and the NFL expected Judge Richard M. Brown to rule in the league’s favor — as has often happened in past cases — The Washington Post reports Brown, “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.”
As The Daily Caller has maintained throughout this case, Berman thinks Brady got a raw deal. He isn’t saying the four-time Super Bowl champion didn’t seek every competitive advantage on his quest for No. 4, but, “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.”
“There has to be some basic process of fairness that needs to be followed,” the judge noted. Specifically, he called the league’s misplacement of ball PSI readings taken during the AFC Championship game — and that’s assuming they were ever recorded in the first place — “a conspicuous absence.” Additionally, he personally singled-out Goodell for deliberately twisting evidence to cast Brady’s possible involvement into masterminding “an illegal scheme that was on par with steroids… A quantum leap.”
Though not written in stone, it’s hard to imagine Berman ruling in favor of the NFL, so says NFL blogger Stephanie Stradley. “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.”
[h/t: Washington Post]