Marshall
Not pretty, but ALIVE!
That goes into the calculation on whether to obstruct the investigation or not. It does not absolve his obstruction, it just offers an explanation for it. The standards of evidence, burden of proof and many other things we have grown to expect in Criminal and Civil proceedings apart from Contract Law are not applicable to private contractual agreements, particularly conflict resolution.I don't think Brady was "generally aware" of anything to do with the actual PSI of the footballs. My honest opinion is that the balls were probably ~12.5psi (the gauges used are inaccurate and not calibrated) and I seriously doubt anyone in the Pat's organization knew about the Ideal Gas Laws. Between that and the gauges being what they were, there is little, if anything, to say that Brady did anything at all wrong.
I've done some noodling on Brady destroying his phone. I won't have company email or a token to log my laptop onto a secure VPN on my phone because it means the company can confiscate it. It's been suggested that Brady would never turn his phone over because it would be setting a precedent and he would rather take the PR hit than set that precedent.
It is common for one side to control a process in exchange for more favorable terms elsewhere in an agreement which is what happened here. I am not saying it was handled well by ANY party, but I don't think the nullification would stand up to scrutiny, though I could see it going away for PR reasons or dragging out until it becomes moot. Imagine Brady breaks a leg and is out for 6 weeks. Accept the suspension without admission of fault and get past it, you actually lose no playing time. I could see something like that.
If it is upheld, it has to get past the fairness issue which is about facts and procedure which should be spelled out in the contract. The two contract oriented (and I believe valid) approaches are breach ( I keep having to look up Breach {contract} and Breech {babies} since they're both in the spell check dictionary) or insufficiency/vagueness. The latter appears to be the root of the decision, but deferring the power to decide process and standards to one of the parties without explanation is not vague. An uneven application is not either unless an illegal reason can be shown.
Obviously there are other opinions, but the potential ramifications go far beyond the specifics and personalities of this particular case if this decision stands.
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