McDonough amends claims vs. ARI to include more
Mike Florio and Chris Simms explain why it’s wise for Terry McDonough to amend his claims against the Cardinals to include defamation and invasion of privacy.
Video Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
- There's Cardinals owner, Michael Bidwell. He has been on the wrong side of, first, an arbitration claim made by former Cardinals executive, Terry McDonough. Now that has been amended, and the amendment to the arbitration claim targets the response the Cardinals had to the original lawsuit. And remember, we talked about that.
- Yeah.
- It was shameful.
- Yeah.
- The way they went after Terry McDonough personally, it was unbecoming of the Cardinals, it was unbecoming of the National Football League, and good for Terry McDonough to do something about it and not take it. He could have filed a separate lawsuit because this would be beyond the scope of whatever he would have to submit to arbitration because he doesn't work for them anymore. He's not required to take these things to arbitration.
- Right.
- He decided to amend his arbitration claim with that, and specifically he's alleging deformation of character and invasion of privacy and all this stuff they dumped out in this lengthy street.
- That's what jumped out to me.
- The manifesto.
- Right.
- It was awful.
- Right.
- He's also contemplating suing the outside PR firm that actually posted the statement.
- Right.
- A guy named Jim McCarthy is the outside PR executive. Him and his firm may get a separate lawsuit for this. It just makes no sense. It was gratuitous. It was pointless. Well, the point was this is what happens. It's F around and find out. That was the point. If you're going to come after us, we're going to come after you, and we're going to make it difficult, we're going to make it awkward, we're going to make it uncomfortable, and you're going to regret the day that you stood up and exercised your legal rights against us.
- Yeah.
- And it's a bunch of crap. And I'm glad he's doing something about it. He does need to do something about it. And I think that at the end of the day why the decision was made to just make it part of his existing arbitration claim, this is the kind of thing that may color the arbitrator against the Cardinals.
- Right.
- If these are part of the facts and evidence. Like, you know, what's wrong with these people?
- Yeah.
- Like, why did they do this to this guy? That could influence the arbitrator to find in favor of Michael Bidwill-- or not Michael Bidwell, in favor of Terry McDonough. I still wouldn't bet on it because the whole thing is rigged in the NFL's favor. They assign the guy to do it. The guy who did it, his firm has done work for the NFL in the past.
Therefore, would want to do work for the NFL in the future. He's a former in-house counsel with the NBA. He's going to come to the table with a mindset that it's with the perspective of the league. It's going to be hard to overcome that, and I don't think this amendement is going to be enough, this invasion of privacy and defamation is going to be enough to get him to change his baked-in mindset.
- Right. Right. I mean, one, it's like you said, it was unnecessary, and it was a low blow like we talked about at the time. And it felt like the Cardinals were super defensive about it because they were being piled on with a lot of subjects, being the worst facility, and paying for lunch, and talk about Jonathan Gannon, and all of that type of stuff was being talked about and making the Cardinals look a little bit lesser than they'd probably like to look.
And then this got thrown on top of it, and it seemed like, yeah, they decided to go scorched Earth, and they got personal on somebody, who was really just, I don't know, kind of explaining some of the faults of the organization that everybody kind of knew, and they just went hard at him.
- The big question factually is whether to what extent burner phones were distributed by ownership--
- Right.
- --for communication with Steve Keim when he was serving a five-week suspension after an extreme DUI guilty plea in 2018. They acknowledge it happened. They're going to blame it on somebody else. And unfortunately, because it's all happening behind closed doors as part of the secret rigged kangaroo court which it is, we're not going to be privy to a lot of it. And that's the other thing I noticed too. In the article from espn.com about this amendment, the Cardinals said we have no comment because there's a confidentiality order. See, the arbitrator has clamped down on everyone.
- Right.
- There was some stuff out there. The arbitrator said nobody's going to talk about anything. If it was an open court, we would at least have access to something.
- Yeah.
- We're not going to have access to very much. By the way, I had a thought as you were talking about all the stuff with the Cardinals. The NFLPA survey that had them as an F-, charging their players for food. And it occurred to me, I wish the Chargers and the Cardinals played this year because--
- That would have been great on the scheudle.
- --can you imagine what the Chargers would have done in their schedule release anime to the Cardinals? There may have been 30 seconds on the Cardinals.
- They could have done it. Wait rooms skip, a Mess Hall skit. They could have done it all.
- They could have taken a shot at Kyler Murray in some way. They would have found all sorts of stuff.
- The illegal contact with Monte Osenfort and Jonathan Gannon.
- All sorts of stuff that they could have done. All right, let's go ahead and take a break. When we return, some big news as it relates to Peacock. And if you're watching on Peacock, you got no problems. You're already covered. You need to spread the word to friends and fans who don't have Peacock because they're going to need it come January. We'll discuss that next here on "PFT Live."
- We're going big time at the Peacock.
