jurisprudence Page 1 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

We Might Soon Learn If The NFL Exchanged Cover-Up Strategies With Big Tobacco
A New York judge gave a group of insurance companies the go-ahead to seek evidence that the NFL sought to share cover-up strategies with tobacco companies as part of a ferocious, years-long legal battle over which side will pay for claims related to the league’s concussion settlement....

Woman Imprisoned For Killing Pregnant Girlfriend Of Chicago Bears Pro Bowler Asks For Murder Conviction To Be Tossed
One of Chicagoland’s great murder mysteries, the one surrounding the 2007 killing of Rhoni Reuter, the pregnant girlfriend of ex–Chicago Bear Shaun Gayle, may have new life. Marni Yang, another girlfriend of Gayle’s who is now in prison for killing Reuter and her unborn child, has filed a petition s...

Law360's Ryan Boysen wrote about Tim Howard, a Florida attorney who repped as many as 250 players in the NFL’s concussion settlement litigation at the same time he was running a hedge fund out of his law office. The fund was used to scam players by fronting them loans with their own money, but wait ...

The Scummy Bucs Tried To Keep Secret Their Failed Attempt To Get Millions From The BP Oil Spill Settlement
This is old, but so what. The more we can talk about how the Tampa Bay Buccaneers cooked their books in a failed attempt to claim settlement money from a far-off oil spill that didn’t actually affect them, the better. Turns out there’s one more twist to pass along: The Bucs sought to keep from publi...

The Buccaneers Tried Accounting Tricks To Claim Money From The BP Oil Spill
This is something else: A federal appeals court rejected the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ attempt to secure nearly $20 million from a settlement fund designed to compensate victims of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, on the grounds that the Bucs tried to use some shady-ass accounting to justify their ...

Did Cal Ripken Jr. Sign This Painting Of An Oriole By John Wayne Gacy?
For those of you clamoring for the autographs of both a serial killer and a Baseball Hall of Famer, here’s a way to, well, kill two birds with one stone. You can buy this “original acrylic painting of an Oriole by John Wayne Gacy, which prominently features the autograph of Cal Ripken Jr.” for $9,99...

The NFL Concussion Settlement Just Keeps Getting Worse And Worse
In what plaintiffs’ attorneys view as a total disaster, the federal judge overseeing the NFL concussion settlement on Thursday denied a motion to reconsider rules changes for physicians she had approved last month. Those changes, as noted earlier, stand to make it even more difficult for players to ...

Tuesday Is A Big Day For The NFL's Concussion Settlement
The NFL concussion settlement is at an inflection point. Tomorrow morning, at the federal courthouse in Philadelphia, a hearing is scheduled to discuss a series rules changes that were recently approved by Senior Judge Anita B. Brody, who has oversight of the settlement. Those changes, which govern ...

Lawsuit Alleges NFL Directed Insurance Carrier To Deny Disability Claims
A medical clinic in Illinois is accusing the NFL of instructing its insurance carrier to deny claims made by former players under the auspices of the league’s disability plan. The allegations are outlined in a lawsuit that also accuses the league of retaliating against the clinic for providing indep...

Prosecutors Drop Extremely Bullshit-Smelling Charge Against Michael Bennett
Last March, Michael Bennett was indicted seemingly out of nowhere, on a felony charge of injury to the elderly. At an utterly bizarre press conference the next day, Houston’s chief of police called Bennett “morally bankrupt” and “morally corrupt,” and alleged that Bennett had shoved a 66-year-old pa...

Sweden Will Prosecute Hockey Player For Blind-Side Hit That Might Have Ended Daniel Paille's Career
A Swedish prosecutor has charged defenseman Thomas Larkin with assault for a blind-side hit on former NHLer Daniel Paille, a check to the head that appears to have ended Paille’s career. The hit “goes beyond a level of violence that can be allowed in sports,” the prosecutor told Sportbladet....

Former Marlin Justin Wayne Sentenced To 4 Years In Prison For Con Involving Drug Addicts' Urine
Justin Wayne was a bust. The fifth overall pick in the 2000 MLB draft, Wayne appeared in just 26 games over three seasons with the Florida Marlins, putting up an ERA over 6 (but earning a World Series ring along the way). Wayne’s post-baseball career was more successful, and more lucrative, at least...

<i>Golf Digest</i> Helped Free An Innocent Man From Prison
In 2012, Golf Digest published a first-person essay by Valentino Dixon (co-written with Max Adler, the magazine’s editorial director). Dixon had never played golf, never even stepped foot on a golf course; he was an inmate at Attica Correctional Facility in New York. He was serving 39-to-life for a ...

A New Jersey federal judge dismissed a class-action lawsuit that accused the New York Jets of screwing over PSL holders. “Agreement expressly disclaims that plaintiff is not acquiring the PSL as an investment or with a view to profiting from future distribution or resale, and further that Defendants...

The NFL Concussion Settlement Keeps Failing People It's Supposed To Help
On Thursday, the federal judge overseeing the NFL concussion settlement denied an appeal filed by the family of a deceased former player with CTE. Under the terms of the settlement, that CTE diagnosis could have been worth as much as $4 million. The reason for the denial? The player’s family missed ...

PSL Holders Sue The Jets For Screwing Them Over
Personal seat licenses are a racket, and a common feature in NFL stadiums. PSLs were instituted across much of the league when the new stadium boom took off around the dawn of this century. They allow teams to offset construction and financing costs by forcing fans into paying a fee just for the ri...

Tom Brady Will Appeal Ballghazi Suspension, Again
In the year 2184, when Tom Brady’s head is thawed from cryostasis to testify against Robo-Goodell in Moon Court, your descendants may wonder how the longest-running legal battle in the history of sports ever got started. (Their neural visit to the electro-sapio-repository will tell them it was about...

Judge Accepts New Darren Sharper Plea Agreement, Will Probably Sentence Him To 15-20 Years
Serial rapist Darren Sharper will likely be sentenced to 15-20 years for his crimes, after he and federal prosecutors agreed to a new supplemental plea agreement, and the judge signed off. Sharper’s original plea agreement, which would’ve seen him serve just nine years in prison, was rejected last m...

Huh, The NFL Might Actually Win Its Appeal On Tom Brady's Suspension
Though neither Roger Goodell nor Tom Brady appeared in the courtroom, today might’ve been the single most important day in this whole Ballghazi mess: the NFL and NFLPA made their cases in front of a three-judge panel that will decide, once and for all (barring one more appeal to the U.S. Supreme Cou...

Judge Rejects Darren Sharper's Plea Deal As Too Lenient
It was baffling that Darren Sharper’s plea deal, for pleading guilty to drugging and raping women in four different states, amounted to just nine years of prison time. It was baffling that the NFL safety turned serial rapist could have been a free man by 2023, and it was baffling that the feds, with...