Last month, the federal judge handling the Brian Flores case sent a very clear message to the NFL that it was time to end the arbitration quest and start defending the claims on the merits.
The NFL didn’t get the message. At least not completely.
While some of the claims in the Flores case have moved to the discovery process, the league has appealed Judge Valerie Caproni’s most recent ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as to Flores’s claims against the Dolphins, Steve Wilks’s claims against the Cardinals, and Ray Horton’s claims against the Titans.
In all three cases, the plaintiffs had contracts with those teams containing arbitration clauses that referred any disputes to the Commissioner or his designee. Still, the overriding problem (as multiple courts have concluded) comes from the effort to delegate the judge/jury role to the NFL.
There’s a big difference between arguing to the court and arguing with the court. The NFL currently seems to be trying to convince multiple courts that they’re wrong.
Either way, multiple claims in the Flores case will continue to be stuck at square one. Which will serve only to slow down any effort to get the four-year-old case ready for trial.
