U.S. District Judge Richard Berman in Manhattan has been assigned the litigation between the NFL and commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFLPA and New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady over the league's decision to uphold his four-game suspension, handed down to the future Hall of Famer in the wake of the Deflategate scandal. Berman, according to a report from Jonathan Stempel and Steve Ginsburg of Reuters, urged a "speedy resolution" and ordered the two sides to begin settlement talks "forthwith actively."
Berman also demanded that the combatants cease their media quarreling.
"While this litigation is ongoing, it is appropriate (and helpful) for all counsel and all parties to this case to tone down their rhetoric," Berman wrote. "The earth is already sufficiently scorched."
It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless, for the league when U.S. District Judge Richard Kyle found "no reason" to keep Brady's case in Minnesota. In the immediate aftermath of Goodell's decision to uphold Brady's suspension, the league filed preemptively in Manhattan. The union then filed a lawsuit in Minnesota, where the NFLPA has found success against the league before, in the form of Adrian Peterson's successful voiding of his suspension earlier this offseason.
Berman, however, is viewed as "liberal," meaning he may well be more lenient towards labor.
"I don't think being in New York gives the league a home-field advantage, but it gives the league a neutral forum," Jodi Balsam, a Brooklyn Law School professor and former in-house NFL Lawyer said, via Stempel and Ginsburg. "Berman is less likely than a judge in Minnesota to enjoin the discipline."
Balsam went on to say that Brady could file an injunction to delay his suspension - something HNGN has discussed at length previously - but that he faces a "high hurdle" because the suspension was imposed via "procedures in the union's collective bargaining agreement."
