Lawsuit: Pay up, Patriots
Two N.Ky. attorneys claim 2002 Super Bowl spying
BY JIM HANNAH |
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Two Northern Kentucky lawyers, a Cincinnati ticket broker and a former University of Kentucky football player have filed a lawsuit that accuses the New England Patriots of cheating in the 2002 Super Bowl and asks for refunds.
The Patriots and coach Bill Belichick illegally videotaped a St. Louis Rams walk-though before the game to gain an unfair advantage, according to their lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in New Orleans, host city of the game. The Patriots upset the Rams 20-17 on a last-second field goal.
Patriots spokesman Stacey James said he had heard of the suit but declined to comment on it.
Through the lawsuit, broker Kevin Hacker, who attended the Super Bowl, asked the federal court to grant the 72,922 people in the stands at the Superdome a full refund. At a face value of $400 per ticket, that would mean the NFL would have to return $29,168,800.
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Willie Gary, who played on the Rams' Super Bowl team and at UK, wants each member of the Rams' Super Bowl roster to receive $25,000 - the difference between the bonuses paid to the losing team and the winning team.
Gary, who lives in Atlanta and plays Arena Football, also wants compensation for not receiving a Super Bowl XXXVI ring, which sell for $125,000 on eBay, according to the suit.
For 45 players, the difference in bonuses and the value of the rings would be $6,750,000.
The plaintiffs' attorneys - Eric Deters of Independence and Hugh Campbell Jr. of Villa Hills, along with John Young of New Orleans - have asked that the suit be granted class-action status. The three lawyers allege the Patriots committed numerous crimes, including fraud, racketeering and breach of contract, in addition to violating Louisiana's unfair trade practices and consumer protection act.
Deters and Campbell are also seeking to triple the damages in the suit under civil racketeering laws.
"We don't want to try this or settle this through the press," Campbell said, "but I would like to communicate there is ways we can get this resolved."
He said the NFL needs to intervene, restore fan confidence in the league and show that cheating "has been nipped in the bud."
Campbell said that will entail Belichick being suspended, at a minimum, and the parties getting together to resolve the case without years of litigation.
Also named as plaintiffs are Missouri residents Peter Trout, a Rams season-ticket holder, and Marcus Miller, who attended Super Bowl XXXVI. Trout claims in the suit that his license for season tickets became less valuable when the Rams lost the Super Bowl.
The NFL caught the Patriots cheating in September. A Patriots employee was videotaping signals by New York Jets coaches. Belichick was fined $500,000 and his team was ordered to pay $250,000. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell also ordered the team to give up its next first-round draft choice.
The idea for the suit came to Campbell, a self-described lifelong NFL fan, after watching this year's Super Bowl and talking with acquaintances about rumors that the Patriots cheat.
During Super Bowl week, the Boston Herald reported that the Patriots had taped the Rams. Citing an anonymous source, the newspaper said a member of the Patriots' video staff taped the Rams' last walk-through practice by staying in the Louisiana Superdome after the team's picture.
Campbell said he found spying on the Jets "crazy," but when he learned of the alleged spying on the Rams, he began to think there might be grounds for a lawsuit.
The suit states the Patriots violated the rule that "no video recording devices of any kind are permitted to be in use in the coaches' booth, on the field, or in the locker room during the game."
The suit claims the Patriots routinely taped opponents' defensive signals from the sidelines, as it was caught doing against the Jets, to decode the communications and file them for future games.
In the suit, Kurt Warner, quarterback for the Rams in the 2002 Super Bowl, said that if the Patriots' coaches knew the defensive signals, they could pass information to the quarterback through the headset in his helmet.
Warner is quoted in the suit stating he remembers little of the walk-through other than that the offense ran some of its red zone plays, or offensive plays within 20 yards of the opponent's goal.
The Rams had seven plays inside the Patriots' 30-yard line in the final quarter of the Super Bowl. At one point, the Patriots stopped the Rams on four successive plays inside the 3-yard line.
Deters said a meeting Thursday between U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter and Goodell bolsters the claims made in the lawsuit.
The New York Times reported Friday that Specter was informed that Belichick probably videotaped opposing sidelines for most of his head-coaching career and the NFL had destroyed evidence of cheating dating to 2002.
"We believe that the NFL definitely has culpability in light of the recent acknowledgment by ... Goodell to Senator Specter that Belichick admitted they have been videotaping teams since 2002," Deters said. "We are consciously not naming the NFL as a defendant at this time in the hopes and belief it shows good will on our part to convince the NFL they should intervene on everyone's behalf to encourage the Patriots to resolve this matter as soon as possible."
Specter, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, also told the Times that the league is investigating Matt Walsh, a former Patriots video assistant who worked for the team during the 2002 Super Bowl.
Deters and Campbell said they would like to speak with Walsh. He and Campbell have not been able to contact Walsh, who has not worked for the Patriots since 2003 and lives in Hawaii.
"I would love for our first subpoena to go out as soon as possible and that would be to Matt Walsh in Hawaii," Campbell said. "My close second would be Bill Belichick."
