| mornelithe said: More importantly, the Judge due to prior case law couldn't rule on the evidence. Precedent had already been set, it's why many many people were confused when he spent the first hearing grilling the NFL on their actual evidence. Which is concerning in and of itself, really. If you take Brady/Pats out of this and realize that in a case where the facts are clearly wrong, the Judge cannot overturn an arbitration award, on those points. |
This is why consumer advocates and attorneys hate binding arbitration clauses in all those form contracts you sign. An arbitrator can have the absolute right to deny you the right to discover additional evidence for your case, make a decision on little evidence, one often contrary to what the law says, and the court can't touch it unless one of a very narrow set of exceptions applies. Add to this that the arbitrator is paid by the parties, and that the arbitrators know one of the parties (the business) is a repeat customer while the consumer is not, and it's laughable how the Supreme Court arrived at its decision that these clauses are fully enforceable. The danger isn't even hypothetical: a half decade ago one of the major arbitrations firms was effectively shut down after it was revealed it was hearing tens of thousands credit card debt cases...when the arbitration firm was advertising its services to debt collectors as a place where they could quickly and cheaply get judgments in their favor.
In this case Brady is lucky the NFL didn't take the time to cross their t's and dot their i's. A few superficialities and this would have gone the other way.
