A U.S. District Court of Appeals ruled on Monday to reinstate Tom Brady’s four-game suspension, and one of the issues that resurfaced in the ruling was Brady’s decision to destroy his personal cell phone.
Most of the decision had nothing to do with Brady’s guilt or innocence. The issue at hand during this appeal process was whether NFL commissioner Roger Goodell acted within his rights by suspending Brady, and the court ruled that he did. One of the reasons for that had to do with Brady destroying his phone.
More from the ruling:
Having been given clear notice that his cooperation with the investigation was a subject of significant interest, we have difficulty believing that either Brady or the Association would have been surprised that the destruction of the cell phone was of importance to the Commissioner.
Additionally, the Commissioner did not increase the punishment as a consequence of the destruction of the cell phone—the four‐game suspension was not increased. Rather, the cell phone destruction merely provided further support for the Commissioner’s determination that Brady had failed to cooperate, and served as the basis for an adverse inference as to his participation in the scheme to deflate footballs.
Finally, any reasonable litigant would understand that the destruction of evidence, revealed just days before the start of arbitration proceedings, would be an important issue. It is well established that the law permits a trier of fact to infer that a party who deliberately destroys relevant evidence the party had an obligation to produce did so in order to conceal damaging information from the adjudicator.
The court still is not saying that Brady was aware of air allegedly being taken out of footballs. The point is that Goodell was being reasonable when he concluded that Brady’s decision to destroy the phone impeded the investigation, and the collective bargaining agreement states that Goodell has the power to draw those conclusions.
As this NFL owner said a long time ago, many people felt that the coverup by the Patriots was worse than the alleged crime. Goodell certainly felt that way and reacted accordingly, and the latest ruling states that he had every right to do that.
