leftfieldlegacy said:
It seems like Judge Berman let Goodell walk into a bear trap when he testified to some sort of equivalence between the Brady suspension and a typical PED suspension. I think as soon as Goodell was finished with that testimony the trap snapped closed and Berman had the NFL on not following fair arbitration practices. That and not allowing access to Nash and lack of notice sealed the deal.
IANAL (obviously) but do these points make it more difficult to overturn this on appeal?
I'm not sure that there was any trap laying there. From the opinion, and looking at the question in retrospect, I think Berman (who has to spend half his life, remember, sentencing kids to prison under mandatory terms for drug violations) was probably genuinely offended that the NFL would attempt to equate this kind of violation with steroids. From this opinion, you can see that he really wasn't playing games or messing around at oral argument or being a contrarian, he was simply honestly and earnestly calling it like he saw it for the whole day.
On the appeal question, nothing that Berman has really done here is going to get too much deference in the court of appeals. They are going to look at it anew and Kessler will have to convince another court all over again. As appellate lawyers like to say -- it doesn't matter who wins first, but who wins last. That's not entirely true here, because Brady gets to play and the NFL will be hard pressed to get a stay, but today is still a very good day. Maybe they will win on appeal, but the bottom line is that the first neutral person to look at this decided they are utterly and completely full of shit, notwithstanding the exceptionally high standard for overcoming awards.