Bernie Parrish on John Madden’s ‘Retirement’
4/17/2009
Subject: Madden not paying retired players while collecting over $100 million in royalties off the retired players’ backs – Did Madden scramble your identity to keep from paying you?
The retired NFL players who were used in Madden EA video games will be suing Madden and EA for using us in those games without compensating us. Madden’s agent Sandy Montag boasts he and Madden collected over $100,000,000 in royalties while paying the retired NFL players used in those games absolutely nothing. Madden knows that the ugly truthful litigation is coming and is probably factoring that into his retirement. I doubt he wants to answer all those fans who will be asking, “Why, John Madden? Why did you screw all those retired players over, you seemed like such a friendly, good-natured buffoon?”
We probably won’t use Manatt Phelps and Phillips and McKool Smith, the attorneys who obtained a $28.1 million verdict for us against the NFLPA for “scrambling retired players identities” in those video games. The jury found it a “grossly fraudulent” action taken so they wouldn’t have to pay the retired players. That case Parrish v NFLPA Case No. 07 0943 WHA carries $21 million in punitive damages and is being appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which doesn’t mean the decision has been overturned nor does it lessen the verdict found by the jury. In my opinion, Madden should have been included in our licensing suit against the NFLPA and so should Electronic Arts.
Irregularities in the trial may even bring about a retrial that will allow the award to be in the $100+ million range where it should have been instead of only $28.1 million. The case is already being retried in the media by Richard Berthelsen and Jeffery Kessler. Regardless of their propaganda, the case has nothing to do with the issue of the number of high profile players not signing what the Judge William Alsup calls a “masterpiece of obfuscating.” That “masterpiece of obfuscation” is the Group Licensing Agreements (GLA) drafted by the NFLPA’s Richard Berthelsen and Jeffery Kessler. The “grossly fraudulent obfuscation” – that GLA – is the issue that lost the NFLPA the $28.1 million. Our side of the trial was warned by Judge Alsup that if we talked to the press about the case he would hold us in contempt. On the other hand, Berthelsen and Kessler seem to be exempt from spinning their previously defeated arguments to try to win them in media articles before the 9th Circuit Court hears the case. Worse yet, they’re now using publications where they have spent over $281,000 over the last several years for NFLPA advertising. So they’re not only retrying the case in the media, they’re actually paying the media to retry the case as an advertisement in the court of public opinion to try to influence the 9th Circuit Court. Are those actions contemptuous? It seems to me that most of what they do is contemptuous. Rigging a union election is contemptuous and it is also illegal.
2,062 retired NFL players participated in our lawsuit with only 12 retired players opting out, 10 of whom work for the defendant – the NFLPA. That’s an amazing vote of endorsement by the retired NFL players.
