Legal Commentary

Opting out with meaning

By Tom Kirkendall

Earlier this week, the owners of the National Football League elected to opt out of the final two years of the league's Collective Bargaining Agreement with its Players Association. The Mile High Report and Stacey Brook do good jobs of analyzing the impact of the owners' election and neither believe that a lockout or strike is likely before a new deal is struck. My sense is that they are probably right, but I did chuckle when I saw this AmLaw Daily blog post on the owners' decision in regard to hiring counsel for the upcoming labor negotiations:

.   .   . [The NFL owners] hired L. Robert Batterman of Proskauer Rose. Batterman is well known in labor circles for his National Hockey League work. It was Batterman who presided over the NHL labor negotiations that scuttled the league's 2004-05 season, making it the first North American pro sports league to lose a full year to labor strife. "Batterman bullied [the union] into submission," says one sports labor lawyer who requested anonymity. "If one accepts the conspiracy theory of collective bargaining, this means the NFL must be looking for trouble," says another. [.  .  .]

No official negotiations have been held. But the hiring of Batterman sent a clear signal to the union. Gene Upshaw, president of the NFL Players Association, told SportsBusiness Journal in April that his "concerns were heightened" when he heard Batterman had been retained, noting that NHL players crumbled before Batterman's hard line. The NFLPA's outside counsel, James Quinn of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, says that the owners "have this bizarre notion that they want to get tough, so they go get Bob Batterman." (Jeffrey Kessler of Dewey & LeBoeuf is also counsel to the NFLPA.)

Doesn't sound exactly as if the NFL owners are preparing to play nice, now does it? ;^)

Full post as published by Houston's Clear Thinkers on May 24, 2008 (boomark / email).