Dave Pear's Blog

Here’s a copy of the just-released 2012 LM-2 filed by the NFLPA with the Dept. of Labor. We’ll be posting more later about what we find in this latest LM-2 but we wanted to get it posted in time for your weekend entertainment. If any of you find some interesting tidbits, please post them in the Comments section. To get you started, Jeffrey Kessler’s former law firm Dewey LaBoeuf was paid around $2.5 million for their CBA and general legal work (before filing for bankruptcy protection, Latham & Watkins was paid $3.1 million and Patton Boggs was paid almost $950,000. So at least $6.5 million went to these three law firms alone last year.
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We uploaded the entire report to Scribd for easy viewing and to make it downloadable for printing. You can also click the Enlarge icon in the lower right corner of the menu at the bottom of the viewing screen to go Full Screen for easier reading (just hit the ESC key to close):
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2012 NFLPA LM-2
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Oh – one more interesting observation: Here’s the answer provided for Question 17 tucked away at the very end of this document (Is there something they know that no one else seems to know yet or is it just arrogance?):
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Question 17: The NFLPA and NFL PLAYERS have been named defendant or co-defendant in a number of other legal actions. In the opinion of the General Counsel and management, these lawsuits will be resolved with no material impact on the NFLPA or its subsidiaries.
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As big a deal as the League and Commissioner Goodell made of the Saints’ bounty program, you’d think it was something that no one ever knew about over the years and years that it’s been going on at all levels of the game. This story’s been in the headlines for the past couple of week and Roger Goodell finally issued his ruling earlier this week. It didn’t take long for new stories to come out that covered the underside of the story. Here are two of those headlines from FOX Sports’ Alex Marvez and A.J. Perez.
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We’ll be discussing these along with many other legal and medical issues that affect retired players at our upcoming Conference April 20 – 22 in Las Vegas. Be sure to register HERE and book your rooms and flight.

NFL suspends Saints coach for one year

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Larry Kaminski has been keeping us updated on his battle against the Denver Broncos filed in California under their Workers Compensation laws. The Broncos current ownership is trying to have their case heard and dismissed in Federal Court based on their claim that when they bought the team, they only acquired the assets and not the liabilities (yes, just when you don’t think it can get any dumber). Read the earlier post – click HERE.
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Here’s a short update from Larry for those of you also going through Workers Compensation cases or considering that as an option:
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Fellow Independent Retired Players:
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Over the past four and a half decades I have witnessed many, many, many, many acts of injustice, chicanery and dishonesty. Some of these acts occurred on the fields and arenas in sport (as a player, teammate and coach), some in the halls of justice, some in the media and press and others in the avenues of everyday life. But never in all my years of experience and knowledge as an athlete, coach, prosecutor, judge, attorney, teacher, professor, journalist, author and rights advocate, have I ever witnessed such open acts of deliberate manipulations of the truth, excessive greed, conscious indifference, breach of trust, conflicts of interest and cowardice as I have in observing the conduct of Gene Upshaw and DeMaurice Smith and their cronies.
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Over the past several days I have been asked by many, many retired NFL players to express to the CURRENT Players, the RETIRED Players, the PRESS, the MEDIA, the FANS and the GOVERNMENT, on why the time will eventually come to rid the great game of professional football, the arguably legally corrupt entity of the NFLPA and its affiliated entities and leadership team. However, NOW IS THE TIME that they should be removed from having any interest or influence over any of the monies and marketing opportunities of retired NFL Players prior to 1993. At the very, very least!
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Based upon the most recent shenanigans employed by the Union leadership and its proven disingenuous and unreliable conduct, it is now evident and crystal clear that their legally manipulative and legally corruptible influence over a trusting group of oblivious and naïve constituents MUST COME TO AN ABRUPT AND DECISIVE END!
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EDITOR’S NOTE: 9:30 PM PST – Judy Battista’s story just posted on the New York Times – Click HERE to read this breaking story.
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On Friday afternoon, a small group of us were informed about the details a conference call that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell had with the attorneys and a small team of retired players from the Eller class action lawsuit. All of us were shocked to hear the news that there was an additional $500 million offered to the retirees that had gone undisclosed to them. From what we understand so far, the money would supposedly be earmarked for “charities, medical research, etc.” and then “managed” under the auspices of the PA. We’ll continue confirm and report more details as the story breaks over the next few days.
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In the meantime, we want to talk a little about how the Internet and social networks have changed the world of communications for better and for worse. We’ve watched an entire revolution take place in Egypt with the fall of the Mubarek regime that started with social network Twitter. And that revolution continues to spread across the Middle East. But social networks like Twitter can also be used to spread gossip and misinformation. And that also seems to happen more often than people may imagine. Fortunately, there’s also a good side to that as well. Leaving a trail of crumbs behind you is not exactly a smart strategy.
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Posted with the express consent of Evan Weiner:

THE BUSINESS AND POLITICS OF SPORTS .
Tuesday, 5 April 2011
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BY EVAN WEINER
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
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Portions of this column are by Evan Weiner and Heather Rascher from ”A Business History of Professional Football,” unpublished manuscript (2005).
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The biggest game on the NFL season starts on April 6 when National Football League owners and the remnants of the now defunct National Football League Players Association face off in a Minneapolis courtroom. In a script that looks like a sequel to the days after the National Football League Players Association imploded in October 1987 when the NFLPA decided to sue NFL owners for free agency, the NFLPA is back in a Minneapolis courthouse and suing NFL owners. Ten players, including one college player who was not even a part of the defunct NFLPA, Von Miller, are suing the league in an antitrust action hoping the court will lift the owners lockout.
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Miller’s name is on the suit but he is planning to attend the National Football League Draft, an act that restricts the freedom of college players in finding jobs. The only reason the draft is legal is through collective bargaining. The owners and players have agreed to a draft. Miller plans to be in the courtroom while New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees, one of the 10 plaintiffs, will not attend the opening day festivities. Brees will be at a golf fundraiser.
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Brees last week sounded a conciliatory note to retired and discarded players after being blasted by Sam Huff for criticizing former players who are down and out because of football related injuries. Brees apparently learned well from the late Gene Upshaw (who was the NFLPA Executive Director) who once said that the association could not worry about every problem. While the NFL and the NFLPA duke it out in Minneapolis, the former NFLPA may be involved in another action as former New Orleans and Miami defensive back Gene Atkins is suing the NFL’s retirement board after being denied additional health benefits by the group which included the late Dave Duerson. The former defensive back, Duerson, was on the board which said ‘no’ to Atkins’ football degenerative claim in 2006. Duerson’s suicide in February 2011 raises questions according to the brief filed about Duerson’s competence in light of statements that came out after the suicide that he had memory loss and difficulties spelling words.
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We just finally managed to download and convert a copy of the entire 637-page NFLPA 2009 LM-2 that was officially filed with the Dept. of Labor on May 28, 2010. It’s another big one!

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NFLPA Lawyers Door

It seems that the NFLPA was under the rule of lawyers for decades when departed Executive Director Gene Upshaw ran the place. We’ve covered many of the lawyers inside over the past couple of years. And current Executive Director DeMaurice Smith recently alluded to the conflict of interest posed by the Groom Law Group with regard to the players’ pension plans; they wrote the plan and they represented BOTH the NFLPA AND the NFL when it came to defending the plan. (Click HERE to see the Super Bowl announcement.)

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Moran vs. NFLPA and NFL Players Inc.

Does the NFLPA think the same way about you?

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Valerie Thomas

Former NFLPA Director of Human Resources Mary Moran is at WAR against the NFLPA and she is taking no prisoners. In August 2009 Moran filed a $4 million lawsuit that claimed sex discrimination, retaliation and wrongful termination of her employment in violation of public policy because she participated in a DOL Office of Labor Fraud and Racketeering investigation of the NFLPA. Moran claimed that the actions of NFLPA management created serious and troubling ethical concerns for her. General Counsel Richard Berthelsen called Mary Moran “a necessary casualty.”

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But Moran is not a victim. She’s a perpetrator. She is GUILTY of doing to me what she now claims that NFLPA management has done to her. Moran doesn’t deserve to get a penny. Whether you do a good deed or a bad deed, always remember: “What goes around comes around.”

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A Necessary Casualty: Valerie Thomas? – In 1988, I cooperated with an internal investigation by NFLPA President George Martin and VP Mike Davis and then I was subsequently fired. I filed a complaint at EEOC regarding race/sex discrimination and prevailed when the NFLPA was found guilty of retaliation.

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In our last post – Valerie Thomas: Life Under Upshaw – former NFLPA Research Analyst and Paralegal Valerie Thomas discussed her years of abuse and violation of her employee’s rights under the heavy hand of departed Executive Director Gene Upshaw and his inner circle. Bob Grant had posted several questions to her in the comments section about the toll from her long battle with the NFLPA and how it has affected her and her family over the years. This is Part 2 of Valerie Thomas’ story.

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Valerie Thomas

Dave,

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Thank you for your earlier comment and for allowing me to be an active participant on your blog.

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It’s hard to accept that a union whose efforts that you supported, including financially, would turn against you in your time of need: your  post-football career.

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I know first-hand what it feels like to be ignored and it is even more dehumanizing to have been ignored while looking in the faces of the perpetrators on a daily basis. For example, my basic needs and rights to have access to my job were denied. When I reported to work, I was locked out with no key to get in the front door and no key to access the elevator. Once on the elevator, I couldn’t get off on the floor where I worked. Instead, I could only get off on the floor below mine and had to walk up a public stairwell. During the mornings, when I had to do business on other floors I had to walk up and down the public stairwells. I could not use the elevator like everyone else, including interns and temporary employees. At lunchtime and upon my return from lunch, I had to go through the same routine with no access to my floor and walk up a public stairwell (two sets of 12 stairs = 24 steps each way). In the afternoons, if I had to do business on other floors, I had to walk up and down the public stairwells. NFLPA management and its legal representatives harassed, intimidated and retaliated against me; they dared me to protect my rights and when I did, they then cheated and stole my livelihood and my family’s legacy.

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Over the past 24 hours, we’ve certainly had a lot of discussions around the old adage “Not seeing the forest for the trees.” In the old way of controlling their spin on all stories about football, the NFL managed to keep all of the television networks and most of the major print media on very short leashes because of their broadcast rights and access to players and managers for interviews. And then the Internet came along. Despite claims of a few who proudly proclaim they invented the Internet and Facebook, this new medium has not only moved the retired football players battle to a new and level playing field; it’s in a different league altogether. Just as the past two weeks have completely caught Tiger Woods and his team of old-school PR flacks like deer in the headlights, the NFLPA and the NFL and their old media machines have been hard-pressed to catch up with a new medium that they can no longer control. The Internet doesn’t belong to anyone and it belongs to everyone.

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The Parrish vs. Players Inc. lawsuit presented an interesting conundrum for the NFLPA under Gene Upshaw; here they were, being sued by their own membership for not paying them royalties due after years of revenues generated from video games and trading cards and other licensed items. Yet they couldn’t allow themselves to notify their retired members that they were part of a class action against… them?!! Keep in mind that this was Upshaw’s NFLPA. It didn’t take long for new Executive Director DeMaurice Smith to quickly void Berthelsen and Kessler’s tired old arguments for another appeal and move the process to the settlement that’s close to being distributed today.  Do we have to remind anyone that if Gene Upshaw was still around, retired players would still be looking at another 3 – 5 years of appeals with no end in sight? (Actually, it appears that Yes – We DO Have to Remind Some People.) And all this happened within the first few months of change in the front office.

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On November 23, 2009, in San Francisco, California, Federal District Court Judge William Alsup rendered a blistering set of three orders approving the settlement agreement in Parrish & Adderley vs. NFLPA Players Inc. However, in rendering the orders, Judge Alsup said of the award of attorneys’ fees, “When combined with the expense reimbursement below, counsel is receiving approximately 25 percent of the value of the settlement. This figure adequately compensates counsel for the work performed in this action. A reasonable fee in light of the ultimate recovery obtained for the class, and is reasonable in light of the missed opportunity for an even higher recovery.”

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