Legal News

Super Bowl XLII & the Law: Go Big Blue!

By Peter Lattman

Let’s close out the day with the only thing on our minds right now. For another legal take on the game, check out this cheeky article by the employment lawyers at Nixon Peabody. One issue they address: the lost productivity employers experience in the days preceding and following Sunday’s battle. Challenger Gray estimates that employers lose $800 million in lost productivity in the week preceding the 2007 Super Bowl and an additional $156 million in lost productivity on the following Monday.

Some, it seems, are indulging in the diversion — particularly those with New York and Boston outposts. The Gotham and Beantown offices of Mintz Levin have placed a friendly wager: If the Pats win, New York’s Bob Bodian and Steve Gulotta will travel to Boston, where, dressed as Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, they’ll hobble around (Brady) and act hostile (Belichick), while serving Brooklyn Pale Ale and knishes. They’ll also throw in free passes for Belichick to visit the Spy Museum in D.C. And the firm will donate $2500 to a charity chosen by the Boston office.

If When the Giants win, the firm’s Boston-based chair Bob Popeo will come to New York and, together with Andy Urban, will serve Sam Adams Winter Ale and fried clams to the entire New York office while singing “New York, New York.” The Boston office will also do its best to obtain a football autographed by all of Tom Brady’s girlfriends. And the firm will donate $2500 toward a charity chosen by New York.

Over at Ropes & Gray — which gamely participated in the World Series bet we orchestrated — there’s another interoffice smackdown. They’ve gone for the more straightforward approach. The winning office will be treated to a free bowl of their opponent’s style of clam chowder — Manhattan if the Pats win; New England if the Giants prevail. (Come to think of it, the superiority of New England clam chowder to the Manhattan variety might be the only thing Boston has on New York.)

The Ropes & Gray lawyers engaged in some good ol’ fashion jawboning. Said New York’s Bryan Chegwidden. “Come Sunday, Eli and Big Blue will enjoy celebratory stogies with Don Shula and the ‘72 Dolphins, the Pats will have a long off-season to review their stolen videotape, and we’ll be stocking up on oyster crackers.” Fired back Boston-based managing partner John Montgomery: “We eagerly await sampling some tasty Manhattan clam chowder, which I trust will not be nearly as thin as the Giants’ secondary.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 01, 2008 (boomark / email).