NFL Quarterbacks Seek Court Order Ending League’s Player Lockout
March 29, 2011, 12:04 AM EDTBy Margaret Cronin Fisk
March 29 (Bloomberg) -- The National Football League should be ordered by a federal judge to end its lockout of players, quarterbacks Tom Brady, Drew Brees and Peyton Manning said in a court filing.
The NFL said it would shut down the most-watched and wealthiest U.S. sport on March 11, after talks broke down over how to divide $9 billion in annual revenue. The three quarterbacks, along with seven other players, filed an antitrust lawsuit against team owners and the league that day.
“Defendants do not contest that their ‘lockout’ is a per se unlawful group boycott and price-fixing agreement in violation of antitrust law,” lawyers for the NFL players said in a court filing yesterday. The alleged violation “denies all players the ability to enjoy a free market for their services,” they said.
The players are seeking an injunction ending the lockout. U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson in St. Paul, Minnesota, is scheduled to hear arguments from attorneys for the NFL players and the team owners April 6 on this injunction request.
During the lockout, players won’t be paid, and teams can’t practice, sign new players or make trades.
The judge can’t stop the lockout, the owners said in court papers March 21. Only the National Labor Relations Board has such authority, they said.
Owners’ Argument
“The jurisdictional bar applies as long as this case ‘involves or grows out of’ a labor dispute,” the owners said in a court filing.
The National Football League Players Association dropped its status as a union after talks toward a new labor agreement failed. This action gave the players the right to pursue an antitrust lawsuit, the players’ lawyers said in yesterday’s filing. The court, and not the NLRB, has jurisdiction over the dispute, they said.
“By disclaiming their union, the players have given up the right to strike, to collectively bargain, to have union representation in grievances, to have union representation in benefits determinations, and to have union regulation of agents,” they said yesterday in a reply to the New York-based NFL’s March 21 filing.
“The players have sacrificed these labor law rights for one reason: to gain the ability to assert antitrust claims against anticompetitive restrictions imposed by the defendants,” the lawyers said.
‘Antitrust Scrutiny’
The defendants’ response to the antitrust suit was that “their conduct should be immune from antitrust scrutiny based on the remarkable assertion that courts and the NLRB can force employees to unionize,” the players’ lawyers said in the filing.
The NFL has the right to lock out employees and the union’s decertification was an attempt to manipulate the law, the league said in its March 21 filing.
“One party to a collective bargaining relationship cannot, through its own tactical and unilateral conduct, instantaneously oust federal labor law or extinguish another party’s labor law rights,” NFL lawyers said.
The team owners voted in 2008 to end the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement with players on March 3, saying the deal didn’t account for costs such as building stadiums. That deadline was extended until March 11 as the owners and players met with a mediator.
The owners and players also disagree on expansion of the season to 18 games from 16, a rookie salary cap and health care for players.
The case is Brady v. National Football League, 0:11-00639, U.S. District Court, District of Minnesota.
--With assistance from Andrew Harris in Chicago, Beth Hawkins in St. Paul, Minnesota, Aaron Kuriloff in New York and Curtis Eichelberger in Washington. Editors: Michael Hytha, Peter Blumberg
To contact the reporters on this story: Margaret Cronin Fisk in Southfield, Michigan, at mcfisk@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: David E. Rovella at drovella@bloomberg.net
