Suddenly, the NFL has a serious legal battle in its hands over the dismissed Las Vegas Raiders coach Jon Gruden, who won a major court battle against the league on Wednesday.
A judge denied two key motions filed by NFL attorneys: first he ruled against the league’s attempt to force private arbitration litigation, and then denied a second motion to dismiss Gruden’s lawsuit altogether. Instead, Nevada 8th District Judge Nancy Allf ruled that the case could go ahead in an open court, which is far more transparent than the sealed arbitration process the league was seeking.
The NFL plans to appeal both sentences.
They were major victories for Gruden, who is suing for damages in response to what he alleges was an “orchestrated campaign” by the NFL and Commissioner Roger Goodell to destroy his “career and reputation” by leaking. of racist, homophobic, and misogynistic emails between Gruden and former Washington executive Bruce Allen. The emails were sent between 2010 and 2018, before Gruden was hired by the Raiders.
These communications were discovered as part of a cache of 650,000 emails collected during the NFL workplace investigation into the Washington franchise. The NFL later shared them with the Raiders, before an indeterminate leak put them in the hands of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. This latest public development sparked a firestorm around Gruden, which led to his resignation on 11 October. Gruden filed his lawsuit against the NFL and Goodell a month later in Clark County, Nevada District Court.
After that, NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy issued a statement framing the litigation as “[E]completely without merit and the NFL will vigorously defend itself against these claims. “
A Nevada judge on Wednesday dismissed the NFL’s motion to dismiss Jon Gruden’s lawsuit against the league. (Photo by AP / John Locher)
Allf disagreed with that assessment Wednesday, after studying several hundred pages of writings from NFL and Gruden’s attorneys, and then listening to oral arguments for nearly 90 minutes on each side.
The league tried to argue that Gruden should be forced to go into league refereeing even though the emails had been sent before he signed a contract to coach the Raiders. Gruden’s legal team responded that his dispute was with the NFL and not with the Raiders (with whom Gruden has already reached a monetary agreement as part of his resignation) and that the league office interfered. in a tortuous manner with his contract with the pressing team for his expulsion. Gruden’s team also argued that the past precedent in Nevada made civil litigation the right place instead of private arbitration. Allf finally sided with Gruden.
The judge also sided with the coach’s legal team, saying there was enough evidence of pressure from the league and chain of custody by email to go ahead with a case against the NFL, which eventually led to Allf to deny the dismissal of the case. The league had argued in the submissions that it had the right to cancel Gruden’s contract for harmful conduct related to the content of the emails.
The next step in the case is likely to be scheduling a hearing with the judge to determine a pre-trial process, which would include the discovery for each party, as well as the depositions and a general schedule for moving forward. However, the NFL also has the option of opening talks now that the case is on track.