Is it proper for Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL, to be the arbitrator in claims against the NFL?
No. At least not according to a dozen law professors.
Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk reported on Tuesday that “As Brian Flores, Steve Wilks, and Ray Horton seek reconsideration of a mixed-bad ruling regarding their effort to escape mandatory arbitration of claims made against the NFL and multiple teams, they have allies in the form of law professors who focus their efforts on dispute resolution.”
“On Tuesday, 12 law professors filed paperwork in support of the position by Flores and his co-plaintiffs that Commissioner Roger Goodell should not be handling the arbitration of the pending claims,” Florio said.
“They argue that arbitration controlled by Goodell would ‘undermine the equitable administration of arbitration and erode public confidence in arbitration,'” Florio reported. “They write that delegating the authorities to Goodell is ‘unconscionable and contrary to the norms of fundamental fairness developed by the arbitration community.’”
The professors opined that allowing Goodell this kind of power would be akin to letting someone referee a game involving a team he or she owns.
The law professors argue that letting Goodell resolve legal claims against the NFL and its teams is like “allowing a referee to officiate a professional football game where the referee owns one of the teams.”
— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) March 21, 2023
Regardless of what one may think of Goodell, this has been an obvious conflict of interest for a long time. In a legal setting, a judge would never be allowed to preside over a case where a relative was either a defendant or plaintiff, or if it involved a business the judge had a stake in. If nothing else, it creates unnecessarily bad optics.
