Last week, the judge presiding over the Sunday Ticket class action threatened to dismiss the case while venting at the plaintiffs’ lawyers regarding the way they’ve conducted the trial. Currently, the judge is holding off on ruling on the league’s motion for judgment as a matter of law until after the jury enters a verdict.
Several of you have asked these questions, or some version of them: How can the judge in the Sunday Ticket trial overrule the jury? If the judge does that, why have it go to the jury in the first place?
During the life cycle of a civil action, the judge has various ways to find in favor of one side or the other, with or without a jury verdict. The Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss challenges right out of the gates whether there’s any legal basis for the claims being made, even if all of the facts in the complaint are accepted as true. The Rule 56 motion for summary judgment asks the court to find that there’s no reason for a jury to resolve the facts because the undisputed evidence developed during the discovery process show that the defendant should prevail.
During the trial, Rule 50 gives the judge the ability to enter judgment as a matter of law — at any time.
The question under Rule 50, in this specific case, hinges on whether the evidence permits a reasonable jury to find in the plaintiffs’ favor. In many cases, the evidence permits reasonable minds to differ on what happened. If, in this case, the judge decides that, as to the key factual questions, there’s no basis for a reasonable jury to find for the plaintiffs, the judge can enter judgment as a matter of law for the NFL — even after the verdict.
So how can a jury find against the NFL if no reasonable jury (in the judgment of the judge) should come to that conclusion? It doesn’t mean the jury is unreasonable. It means the jury got confused by issues unrelated to the strict legal requirements of the case.
Big companies hate jury trials due in large part to the fact that jury decisions often are made based on visceral notions of what is and isn’t fair and just. In this case, it would be very easy for the jury to find (based on evidence that has come to light through media reports) that the NFL has unfairly restricted consumer options by requiring Sunday Ticket to be priced high enough to get a large percentage of them to not buy it and watch local CBS and/or Fox affiliates instead.
But it’s one thing for the situation to seem unfair and another thing for it to be a violation of the federal antitrust laws. If the plaintiffs failed to introduce sufficient evidence to support a jury verdict on any of the key building-block elements that lead to an antitrust violation, it doesn’t matter if the NFL’s pricing strategy seems unfair, unjust, or wrong.
Still, even if the judge gives the NFL a legal Hail Mary after a jury verdict against it, the NFL would be well advised to take the jury’s decision to heart. Because it will mean that a group of average American citizens determined that the NFL’s pricing habits for Sunday Ticket are unfair, unjust, and/or wrong.
Think of it this way. There’s no law against being an asshole. Under certain circumstances, the manifestations of assholish tendencies can get you sued. If the jury thinks the defendant is an asshole, the jury can become more inclined to check whatever boxes need to be checked in order to find against the defendant — not because it believes the evidence introduced at trial satisfies the technical legal requirements of the case it’s considering but because the jury thinks the defendant is an asshole.
So if, in any civil case, the jury finds against the defendant and if the judge enters judgment for the defendant notwithstanding the verdict, the defendant needs to look in the mirror and ask himself a very important question.
Am I an asshole?