359 replies to this topic

[mweb08]

Meanwhile Netflix paid $500 million to have Seinfeld on their service for five years.

I hope I'm cancelled next!

[cprenegade]

Jon Gruden suing the NFL.  Don't blame him at all.  Personally, I think he has a good case and I hope he burns the NFL on it. 

 

https://www.cnn.com/...-spt/index.html

[Mackus]

What's his argument?  That the NFL didn't help him cover up the things he was saying on unencrypted email?

[mweb08]

First off, screw Gruden. However, hopefully this leads to other emails seeing the light of day since it seems that Gruden was selectively targeted.

[TwentyThirtyFive]

Yeah, when its basically only his shit being published its pretty easy to argue he was targeted.

[Mackus]

What's wrong with targeting him?  Is it actually illegal in any way?

[You Play to Win the Game]

What's wrong with targeting him? Is it actually illegal in any way?

You can’t terminate employee A for one thing and do nothing to employee B for doing the same thing. But I’m not sure other NFL owners are employees, they’re owners. I doubt he has a leg to stand on. But I do hope it could lead to more disclosure of the WFT emails. And that may be all he’s doing this for.

Every article I’ve read so far on it suggests he has a legitimate case, so we’ll see. The filing isn’t fully public yet, so that’ll tell us a lot more.

EDIT: as far as workplace labor discrimination laws are concerned, being “forced to resign” is the same thing as being fired. Just FYI on that, given he technically resigned.

[You Play to Win the Game]

Being targeted - the context within a targeting claim is others are getting away with the same behavior. But he’d have to present evidence that that’s the case. You can’t claim it is the case, and then send the court on an exploratory witch hunt of document collection to find the stink. So for this case to be heard IMO, he’s gotta have some emails of his own or something that he can present as evidence that he is being treated unfairly.

But again, the other angle is, are owners even considered employees in this context? And would an owner of Team A being treated one way and a Coach of Team B being treated another - would that still count anyway? Aren’t they two separate organizations?

[Mackus]

You can’t terminate employee A for one thing and do nothing to employee B for doing the same thing.

 

Are you sure about that?  I know you can't selectively apply rules discriminately, like you can't fire a black person the first time they are late but never fire white people for the same offense.  But I think you can enforce rules that exist against one individual person even if you don't enforce the same rules the same way against everybody else.

 

Where I work almost never fires people, but if they want you gone, they investigate you for time card fraud.  If they can determine you are lying about your hours worked, they can pretty much instantly terminate you.  They don't routinely investigate time card fraud for people they don't want gone.  I may be over-simplifying how the process actually works, I'm not involved, but I work for a huge place that has tons of lawyers on staff so I assume they know the legal implications of doing things this way.

 

And again, nobody terminated Gruden.  He resigned.  

[You Play to Win the Game]

Yes I’m sure. I work in HR. You absolutely can’t, but it happens all the time and they get away with it because it’s really hard to prove without proper documentation. Like with the time card example, perfect example, that is illegal and unfair but how would an employee prove it without them, before they were found out, having documented every other employees arrival and departure times? That’s why you rarely hear of this kind of suit, or why it doesn’t tend to have legs when it happens.

[You Play to Win the Game]

That he resigned in this context is irrelevant. When someone is holding a gun to your head, it doesn’t matter if the words on the separation papers read “resigned” or “terminated”. He will easily be able to make the gun to his head argument.

[cprenegade]

Are you sure about that?  I know you can't selectively apply rules discriminately, like you can't fire a black person the first time they are late but never fire white people for the same offense.  But I think you can enforce rules that exist against one individual person even if you don't enforce the same rules the same way against everybody else.

 

Where I work almost never fires people, but if they want you gone, they investigate you for time card fraud.  If they can determine you are lying about your hours worked, they can pretty much instantly terminate you.  They don't routinely investigate time card fraud for people they don't want gone.  I may be over-simplifying how the process actually works, I'm not involved, but I work for a huge place that has tons of lawyers on staff so I assume they know the legal implications of doing things this way.

 

And again, nobody terminated Gruden.  He resigned.  

 

This is a little different than just firing an employee.  Your company, and any company, can get away with investigation of time card fraud on certain people by using a claim that they "randomly" audit such things.  Someone would have to prove they were targeted specifically and it wasn't just randomly discovered.  And even still, if the person was engaging in time card fraud, that is usually an offense that can trigger an immediate termination.  

 

Gruden's ignorance and bigotry in emails may be offensive to people, but it is not illegal.  Now the NFL may be able fire him for conduct that puts the league in a bad light.  But the problem here is that only his emails came out, and when people asked to have the entire batch of emails released the NFL emphatically said no.  He resigned, but he has a case that he was harassed into resigning.  Even Mark Davis said when asked about it, "Go ask the NFL."  Certainly sounds like Davis wasn't on board with the whole thing.  

 

I think Gruden has a case, but we will probably never see a real winner.  The NFL has a history of settling to make the publicity go away.  They did that with Kapaernick, even though I thought their case was winnable.  Kap claimed collusion, but the burden was on him to prove the owners conspired together to keep him out of the league.  I never saw any proof of that, even though it could have been true.  His lawyers whole argument was that lesser QBs were getting signed over him.  So what?  Maybe the owners didn't want the lightning rod he had become.  No matter, he needed proof the owners knowingly worked together to keep him out of the league.  Without that, he wasn't going to win.  But the NFL decided they wanted that whole thing to go away, so they settled.  And that is most likely what will happen in this case as well.  

[Mike in STL]

This is a little different than just firing an employee. Your company, and any company, can get away with investigation of time card fraud on certain people by using a claim that they "randomly" audit such things. Someone would have to prove they were targeted specifically and it wasn't just randomly discovered. And even still, if the person was engaging in time card fraud, that is usually an offense that can trigger an immediate termination.

Gruden's ignorance and bigotry in emails may be offensive to people, but it is not illegal. Now the NFL may be able fire him for conduct that puts the league in a bad light. But the problem here is that only his emails came out, and when people asked to have the entire batch of emails released the NFL emphatically said no. He resigned, but he has a case that he was harassed into resigning. Even Mark Davis said when asked about it, "Go ask the NFL." Certainly sounds like Davis wasn't on board with the whole thing.

I think Gruden has a case, but we will probably never see a real winner. The NFL has a history of settling to make the publicity go away. They did that with Kapaernick, even though I thought their case was winnable. Kap claimed collusion, but the burden was on him to prove the owners conspired together to keep him out of the league. I never saw any proof of that, even though it could have been true. His lawyers whole argument was that lesser QBs were getting signed over him. So what? Maybe the owners didn't want the lightning rod he had become. No matter, he needed proof the owners knowingly worked together to keep him out of the league. Without that, he wasn't going to win. But the NFL decided they wanted that whole thing to go away, so they settled. And that is most likely what will happen in this case as well.

Could you imagine if the some of the rest of the emails they don’t want to go public, include owners conspiring to keep CK out of the league?

[cprenegade]

Could you imagine if the some of the rest of the emails they don’t want to go public, include owners conspiring to keep CK out of the league?

 

You might have hit on something there.  Maybe there are some incriminating emails toward the end of that string that show there was a collective effort to keep him out of the league.  And maybe some of them would incriminate Goodell as being in on it.  That would certainly be why the NFL doesn't want to release the whole thing.  And if Gruden knows that, he might keep pressing until all the dirty laundry gets out in the open.  

[makoman]

Jon Gruden is very rich and is now effectively banned from doing the only thing he’s ever done. Yeah, I could see him taking a bunch of money from the NFL to just go away, but I could also see him try his best to burn the whole thing down. It will be interesting to see. The NFL really doesn’t want these emails to be made public it seems.

[russsnyder]

You can’t terminate employee A for one thing and do nothing to employee B for doing the same thing. But I’m not sure other NFL owners are employees, they’re owners. I doubt he has a leg to stand on. But I do hope it could lead to more disclosure of the WFT emails. And that may be all he’s doing this for.

Every article I’ve read so far on it suggests he has a legitimate case, so we’ll see. The filing isn’t fully public yet, so that’ll tell us a lot more.

EDIT: as far as workplace labor discrimination laws are concerned, being “forced to resign” is the same thing as being fired. Just FYI on that, given he technically resigned.

It seems like you hit it on the head with your first sentence. It appears that he was targeted and his biggest mistake was roasting Goodell in the emails. The NFL' Fuehrer is not going to stand for that. I think Gruden will be offered a settlement. I'd love to see this go to court.

[russsnyder]

This is a little different than just firing an employee. Your company, and any company, can get away with investigation of time card fraud on certain people by using a claim that they "randomly" audit such things. Someone would have to prove they were targeted specifically and it wasn't just randomly discovered. And even still, if the person was engaging in time card fraud, that is usually an offense that can trigger an immediate termination.

Gruden's ignorance and bigotry in emails may be offensive to people, but it is not illegal. Now the NFL may be able fire him for conduct that puts the league in a bad light. But the problem here is that only his emails came out, and when people asked to have the entire batch of emails released the NFL emphatically said no. He resigned, but he has a case that he was harassed into resigning. Even Mark Davis said when asked about it, "Go ask the NFL." Certainly sounds like Davis wasn't on board with the whole thing.

I think Gruden has a case, but we will probably never see a real winner. The NFL has a history of settling to make the publicity go away. They did that with Kapaernick, even though I thought their case was winnable. Kap claimed collusion, but the burden was on him to prove the owners conspired together to keep him out of the league. I never saw any proof of that, even though it could have been true. His lawyers whole argument was that lesser QBs were getting signed over him. So what? Maybe the owners didn't want the lightning rod he had become. No matter, he needed proof the owners knowingly worked together to keep him out of the league. Without that, he wasn't going to win. But the NFL decided they wanted that whole thing to go away, so they settled. And that is most likely what will happen in this case as well.

Gruden appears to be a sacrificial lamb.

It's laughable that he lost his job and the owner and executives of the WFT isn't facing any heat. After all, Gruden's emails were uncovered as part of the investigation of the WFT.

[Mackus]

It's laughable that he lost his job and the owner and executives of the WFT isn't facing any heat. After all, Gruden's emails were uncovered as part of the investigation of the WFT.

 

Fair point on ownership (though Snyder stepped down at least temporarily as the controlling stakeholder of the franchise as a result of the investigation and the team was fined $10 million), but the executive had already been fired a couple years ago.

[russsnyder]

Fair point on ownership (though Snyder stepped down at least temporarily as the controlling stakeholder of the franchise as a result of the investigation and the team was fined $10 million), but the executive had already been fired a couple years ago.

Snyder is most likely running that team through his wife. ( Probably difficult to prove 100 per cent.)

My point is that the guy that's gets in the jackpot from the investigation is someone who did not work for the WFT at the time the stuff was going on. ( or ever for that matter.)

The lesson to everyone in the NFL is, don't call the commish names in emails that he is privy to. He'll make you pay.

It must be good to be the king.

[Mike in STL]

Jon Gruden is very rich and is now effectively banned from doing the only thing he’s ever done. Yeah, I could see him taking a bunch of money from the NFL to just go away, but I could also see him try his best to burn the whole thing down. It will be interesting to see. The NFL really doesn’t want these emails to be made public it seems.

They really don’t want them to come out, which should be a giant red flag, meaning they should come out.