The Supreme Court today decided not to hear the appeal in the lawsuit brought by disgruntled New York Jets fan Carl Mayer against the New England Patriots over the “Spygate” scandal. Mayer, a lawyer, was suing the Patriots on behalf of all Jets’ fans, seeking millions in damages for essentially cheating.
By not hearing this case, the Supreme Court not just upheld the lower court’s dismissal of Mayer’s suit, but in a very real sense helped prove that a league like the NFL could legally fix its own games.
What this case boiled down to was this: the Patriots “cheated” by improperly videotaping opposing teams’ coaching signals. They then used that knowledge to win more games. This was something the Patriots’ coaching staff participated in for years, likely dating to when Head Coach Bill Belichick started with the team in 2000.
The NFL finally “caught” Belichick and the Patriots in 2007. Both were subsequently fined: Belichick for $500,000 and the Patriots organization for $750,000 plus a first round draft pick. They have not won a championship since the Spygate scandal broke.
Mayer’s suit alleged that he and other Jets fans had been duped by the Patriots. He argued that they deserved their money back for the games between the two teams played at the Jets’ home stadium, the Meadowlands, because for those seven years, the playing field was clearly not level.
The lawsuit originally reached all the way to the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. It was here that two revelations were made.
The first was that the Patriots’ lawyers argued that had Jets fans known the Patriots were cheating via this illegal videotaping system, they would have still purchased tickets to the games.
In essence, lawyers for the NFL stated that fans are such suckers for NFL football, cheating or not, they’ll purchase tickets to any game played.
Yet the larger, more important fact to come from the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals was this—as directly quoted from the precendential opinion of Circuit Judge Cowen: “At best, he [Mayer] possessed nothing more than a contractual right to a seat from which to watch an NFL game between the Jets and the Patriots, and this right was clearly honored.”
In other words, your NFL ticket gives you a license to see a NFL game. It doesn’t mean it has to be played by any specific rules, or that the rules must be enforced, or that the game has to be legitimate. If you paid good money and witnessed a rigged game—no matter—you paid to see a NFL game, and that is what they provided to you.
As Cowen also wrote, “Mayer possessed either a license or, at best, a contractual right to enter Giants Stadium and to have a seat from which to watch a professional football game. In the clear language of the ticket stub, ‘[t]his ticket only grants entry into the stadium and a spectator seat for the specified NFL game.’ Mayer actually was allowed to enter the stadium and witnessed the ‘specified NFL game[s]’ between the Jets and Patriots. He thereby suffered no cognizable injury to a legally protected right or interest.”
To make matters worse, Cowen concluded with this: “We do not condone the conduct on the part of the Patriots and the team’s head coach, and we likewise refrain from assessing whether the NFL’s sanctions (and its alleged destruction of the videotapes themselves) were otherwise appropriate. We further recognize that professional football, like other professional sports, is a multi-billion dollar business. In turn, ticket-holders and other fans may have legitimate issues with the manner in which they are treated….Significantly, our ruling also does not leave Mayer and other ticket-holders without any recourse. Instead, fans could speak out against the Patriots, their coach, and the NFL itself. In fact, they could even go so far as to refuse to purchase tickets or NFL-related merchandise….However, the one thing they cannot do is bring a legal action in a court of law. [emphasis in original].”
The Supreme Court upheld this decision. This is just further proof of how the NFL can mistreat its fans, perhaps even fix their own games, and legally get away with it.
Comments