On the sixth day of the Sunday Ticket trial, the judge was starting to get upset.
Judge Philip Gutierrez previously chastised the plaintiffs’ lawyers for taking too much time in the questioning of Fox executive Larry Jones. On June 12, he opened the day by explaining that he planned to trim roughly 20 percent of the hours he had allotted for the trial.
“I’ve got some concerns about the use of time,” Judge Gutierrez said. “It’s obvious to me that in giving the parties 25 hours a side, I gave the parties too much time, way too much time. To say that this trial has gone inefficiently is -- well, that’s all I’ll say, it’s gotten cumulative, repetitive. Every estimation is too long. I want to call back time. I’m thinking about calling back five hours a side so that each side has 20 hours a side.”
He shared one specific example about the amount of time spent for opening statements.
"[Y]ou said an hour, it took an hour and a half,” the judge said. “I mean, I feel like I’ve been taken advantage of at every turn in being generous with time. I was told an hour for opening, it was an hour and a half.”
His bigger concern was that the case was plowing the same ground, repeatedly.
“I mean, we’re hearing the same thing over and over again,” he said. “We understand, yes, the 32 clubs give their rights to the NFL and the NFL gets the best price it can from the networks under the [Sports Broadcasting Act], and then this -- from your perspective, a horrible thing happened in terms of pricing. I think this case is over already. I mean, I think this jury understands what the heck happened.”
That said, the judge was entertained by what he was hearing from Dr. Daniel Rascher about college and pro football.
“I’m here having a great old time listening to Mr. Rascher talk about college football and pro football,” the judge said. “It’s great to me, I’m interested. But these jurors aren’t sports fans necessarily. I don’t know what they’re going to think, you know, whether . . . Dr. Rascher’s right or, you know, your guess is as good as mine what these eight ultimate folks are going to say. I mean, even though sometimes it’s cumulative, Rascher’s interesting to me.”
The judge’s comments are very interesting to me. Because he made others as the case kept unfolding. And in only nine days he’ll hear arguments on whether he should throw out the entire $4.7 billion verdict.