“Bait-and-switch” is a scam or a con wherein someone advertises an appealing product at a very attractive price with no intention of selling that product at all; rather, at the last moment an inferior product is substituted for the one that was advertised. Often, bait-and-switch operations are illegal.
I went grazing on the Internet yesterday afternoon to check on the status of Jon Gruden’s lawsuit against the NFL for a whole bunch of things related to his being fired as the coach of the Las Vegas Raiders after some less than proper emails from him became known to the public. As I have said here before, I am rooting for Gruden to be allowed to have his case heard in open court where evidence that is introduced is simultaneously available to the public. Other than hoping for an open and public trial, I do not particularly care at this point if Gruden prevails in his lawsuit; I just want this one adjudicated in the public sphere.
The status of the case is pretty simple:
- The suit was filed about 2 years ago. The NFL immediately sought to take it away from the Nevada State courts and to have the case decided by arbitration.
- Arbitration would provide a hearing for Gruden – – but none of the evidence would necessarily see the light of day. The public would learn of the arbitration decision and not much more.
- The trial court in Nevada denied the NFL’s motion to reassign the matter to arbitration and the NFL naturally appealed that ruling. The matter now resides with the Nevada Supreme Court; if that court upholds the trial court decision, the matter will remain in open court pending a likely appeal by the NFL to the US Supreme Court.
Basically, nothing much has happened in the case in more than a year and even if Gruden prevails in the Nevada Supreme Court, it looks as if it will be at least a couple more years before any final determination of the venue for the action is reached. And, as I thought about the case status and the possible next steps along the path to resolution, I began to wonder if the NFL is simply doing a bait-and-switch here.
- The legal teams here are going through all their motions to reach a final conclusion on how this matter will be heard and decided.
- People like me who want to know what else might have been in the cache of emails that was not leaked to the NY Times and Wall Street Journal which kicked this snowball off the cliff in the first place continue to pay attention and hope for a trial in open court.
- However, in the end, that is probably not going to happen even if Jon Gruden wins at the US Supreme Court level because at that point the NFL can and would likely settle the matter out of court with a “sizeable” payment that only a business entity of the size and scope of the NFL can afford.
Now that I have composed these thoughts, maybe bait-and-switch is not the proper metaphor here. Perhaps the better analogy is that I am Charlie Brown, and the NFL is Lucy holding the football for me to kick. You know what Lucy does every time that situation obtains …
In another situation involving a fired football coach, Pat Fitzgerald has filed a lawsuit against Northwestern University alleging wrongful termination; he is seeking $130M from the university in the matter. The suit alleges that Northwestern is in breach of two contracts (No, I do not know anything about multiple contracts), that the school defamed Fitzgerald and that Northwestern intentionally inflicted emotional distress on Fitzgerald. Recall that Fitzgerald was initially suspended by the university for two weeks after allegations of hazing within the football program were investigated by the university. At the time of the suspension, the university president said in a communication to the Northwestern community that the investigation did not find “any credible evidence that Coach Fitzgerald himself knew anything about it”.
Recall in the Watergate hearings, Senator Howard Baker (R-TN) framed the critical issue before the Select Committee as:
“What did the President know and when did he know it?”
It seems to me that is similarly a key question in this lawsuit against Northwestern University – – except the “president” in this matter is the president of a university and not the President of the United States.
And while we are flailing about in the legal soup related to fired football coaches, Mel Tucker is also reported to be gearing up a wrongful termination suit against Michigan State. Tucker lost his job after he was accused of having phone sex with a woman without her consent. I have not found any reports of a lawsuit having been filed, but lawyers representing Tucker did send a 106-page letter to the interim-president of Michigan State claiming to have evidence that the woman accusing Tucker in this matter “manipulated a key witness” and also “deleted key evidence”.
Three head football coaches; two wrongful termination lawsuits and probably a third; tens of millions of dollars involved in the “terminations for cause”; and I suspect that it will be at least 5 years before all three matters come to a close. Sit back and enjoy the ride…
Finally, given the topic of the day, it seems appropriate for me to close with this trio of observations:
“The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.” [H. L. Mencken]
And …
“Lawsuit, n: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out as a sausage.” [Ambrose Bierce]
And …
“If law school is so hard to get through, how come there are so many lawyers? [Calvin Trillin]
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………