A riled-up Jets fan is still smarting from revelations three years ago that Coach Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots were caught cheating during a game with the Jets, videotaping Jets coaches flashing play signals. And since he's a lawyer, he's decided to sue the Patriots for $185 million on behalf of all fans.
Carl Mayer, a Jets season ticket holder, thinks fans deserve refunds on all the games played at the Meadowlands between the two teams since 2000, when Belichick became head coach of the Pats. He estimates that fans spent a total of $62 million on tickets, and are entitled to triple that amount under fraud laws. According to his suit, the videotaping "violated the contractual expectations and rights of New York Jets ticket holders who paid to watch a game played in compliance with the league's rules."
Mayer first filed against the Pats in 2007, and has been in legal limbo since; according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, "the lawsuit was widely derided and ridiculed," and the NFL said it "would only waste more time, money and judicial resources." U.S. District Court judge initially threw out the case without a hearing, but it has since been resurrected by the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, and was selected to be one of the relatively few cases to get an oral argument before a three-judge panel.
Yesterday, a lawyer for the Patriots said, "Every spectator that goes to a game expects there will be rules infractions," and, when a judge asked, "Do you think someone would pay that kind of money [for tickets] if they knew in advance it wasn't a fair game?" he responded, "Given what I know about professional sports -- yes." Belichick's lawyer said, "we have no duty to Jets fans" to owe them a fair game.
