Special Master Stephen Burbank issued an opinion that the Falcons were entitled to recover the amounts sought. The decision was appealed to the district court, which entered an order (Vick Order) stating that the bonus payments were already earned and thus not subject to forfeiture. The League then filed a Rule 60(b) motion to vacate the district court’s judgment, arguing that (1) the district court’s oversight of the consent decree should be terminated because of intervening changes in the law and factual circumstances and (2) the district judge should remove himself from the case because of the reasonable perception that he was biased. The district court denied the motion. The League now appeals from the Vick Order and the denial of its Rule 60(b) motion to vacate the judgment. We affirm.

It's an interesting decision. Some quick takes:

To me, the most interesting part was the NFL's attempt to disqualify Judge Doty from hearing any more matters under the settlement. The decision describes the argument thusly:

Following the district court’s ruling on the forfeiture issue, the League filed a Rule 60(b) motion to vacate the judgment on the ground that (1) the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Pro Football, Inc., 518 U.S. 231 (1996), as well as changes in factual circumstances, warranted a modification of the consent decree to eliminate the district court’s oversight; and (2) the district judge’s statements in two sports-related news articles and his practice of having ex parte meetings with counsel for the Association created a perception that he was biased against the League.

On the issue of bias, the district judge stated that his comments in the sports articles did not relate to the merits of the Vick proceeding and would not lead a reasonable person to question his impartiality. The district judge acknowledged having had ex parte meetings with counsel for the Association, but stated that a reasonably informed person would know that the merits of a proceeding were never discussed, that such meetings often preceded decisions in the League’s favor, and that the practice is the result of a long history—stemming back to the 1993 settlement—in which both parties were invited to meet in the judge’s chambers for coffee and the exchange of social pleasantries.

Concluding that the League had not established a reasonable perception of bias, nor any changed circumstances warranting modification of the consent decree, the district court denied the Rule 60(b) motion.

I assume the NFL's lawyers were thinking Microsoft regarding Judge Doty's comments in the Media. The 8th Circuit did not bite:

The League also contends that the district judge erred in refusing to recuse himself because of his comments in the press and ex parte meetings with Association representatives. The League first takes issue with two newspaper articles, both of which focused on the district judge’s role in prompting the 1993 antitrust settlement and contributing to a period of peace and prosperity in professional football. The first article was published on July 10, 2005, in the Colorado Springs Gazette, and entitled “The Peacemaker: Sports’ most stable league was forged in Judge David Doty’s courtroom.” Along with the text, the article featured two large pictures of the district judge in a black robe, holding a football. The story was largely historical, explaining how the antitrust lawsuit developed, came before the district judge, and was settled after the judge convinced League officials to compromise. [. . .] The district judge shared a brief anecdote about cajoling the League into a settlement, and he is quoted as saying that the relationship between the top NFL and Association labor officials should be a model for other sports leagues. Near the end of the article, the district judge is quoted again in the following passage: Doty said during one good stretch of negotiations, he said jokingly to the attorneys for each side they did not need him any longer. “It was just an off-handed comment,” Doty said. “But a few days later I received a letter from the owners’ group requesting, based on what I said, that I remove myself from matters involving the NFL and the players’ union. I laughed at the letter and wrote them a letter kindly denying their request. They would have loved for me to be out of the way. But the letters were good-natured fun.”

The second article was published on January 28, 2008, in the Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal, and entitled “NFL’s toughest official wields a gavel, not a whistle.” It was written to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the district judge’s first major ruling in professional football antitrust litigation. The article recounted much of the same history that appeared in the Gazette story and included - the district judge’s observation that then-NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue was “[a] damn good lawyer.” The district judge is also quoted in two other passages: “[NFL Owners] pretend they’re getting beaten around. Well, they did, initially, but they had a position that was not legally sound.” Through a league spokesman, Tagliabue declined comment. Said Doty, though, “I think if you ask Tagliabue, he would say, ‘The whole thing has come out our way.’ Because, even though they complain about it . . . all they’ve done is make tons of money.” * * * [The district judge] admits there’s a pinch of ego involved in his retention of the NFL matters. “I could walk away from this case,” he said. “But there’s one problem: I know that I know too much. They know, including the NFL guys, that they don’t have to re-educate me every time they show up here.”

(Emphasis supplied.) Though the Judge really talked too much (in my view, Judges should not be talking at all about cases that were and are before them), I agree with the 8th Circuit:

Viewed in historical context, then, the district judge’s comments about the League’s desire to shed itself of the district court’s oversight and his observations regarding the owners’ fiscal success were largely statements of the obvious. The tone of the comments, though perhaps unduly casual, was not derogatory or disrespectful—indeed, the district judge praised the NFL leadership and cited the labor leaders on both sides as examples for other leagues.

The 8th Circuit closes this section with an admonition to judges generally on speaking publically.

The 8th Circuit then addresses the substantive issues of the anti-forfeiture provision in the collective bargaining agreement:

Both parties recognize that under this rubric, the relevant question is whether Vick’s roster bonuses should be categorized as “signing bonus allocations,” subject to the years-performed test, or “other salary escalators or performance bonuses,” subject to the already-earned test. The Association argues that, whatever a roster bonus is, it is not a signing bonus allocation because the terms “roster bonus” and “signing bonus” are commonly understood to refer to two distinct payment arrangements. Logically, therefore, a roster bonus must fall into one of the two categories of compensation subject to the already-earned test. Since Vick satisfied the preconditions of making the eighty-man roster in 2005 and 2006, the Association contends that the money was fully earned.

Hard to see your way around that argument. The NFL tried:

The League argues, however, that the roster bonuses were actually signing bonus allocations because certain rules governing the salary cap and minimum player salary (1) define the term “signing bonuses” to include roster bonuses in certain circumstances and (2) address a team’s choice to convert non-guaranteed compensation into a signing bonus allocation. Specifically, Article XXIV, Section 7(b)(iv) states that “[f]or purposes of determining Team Salary under the foregoing, the term ‘signing bonus’ shall include . . . any roster bonus or Paragraph 5 Salary that the Club had the right to guarantee for skill, when the Club subsequently exercises the right to guarantee such bonus or Paragraph 5 Salary for skill.” Article XXXVIII-A, Section 11 also contains an oblique reference to “convert[ing] non-guaranteed compensation to a signing bonus allocation.” Reading the two provisions together, the League argues that a roster bonus is converted into a signing bonus allocation when it is guaranteed for skill. Both of Vick’s roster bonuses included an option for the Falcons to guarantee the bonuses for skill, which the team properly exercised. The League argues that once that occurred, the money became a signing bonus allocation, subject to forfeiture for years not performed. The Special Master accepted this characterization and concluded that the Falcons could recover a prorated portion of Vick’s bonuses.

Umm, ok. Somehow the Special Master was convinced to treat salary cap provisions of the CBA as if they were applicable to the separately bargained for anti-forfeiture provisions of the CBA. Since the Vick matter was a forfeiture case, it is unfathomable to me how the Special Master could have decided the way he did. It was also unfathomable to Judge Doty and the 8th Circuit:

The League contends that the district court’s contrary decision violated important rules of contract construction, in that it failed to use the language on the salary cap and minimum player salary to interpret the forfeiture provision. See 11 Samuel Williston, Treatise on the Law of Contracts § 32:6 (Richard A. Lord, ed., Supp. 2007) (“Generally, a word used by the parties in one sense will be given the same meaning throughout the contract in the absence of countervailing reasons.”); Reda v. Eastman Kodak Co., 233 A.D.2d 914, 915 (N.Y. App. Div. 1996) (noting that a court must make a reasonable effort to harmonize all of the terms in a contract). But this is not a case where a word or phrase has a straightforward meaning in one context that can be directly applied in another. Section 7(b)(iv), on which the League primarily relies, states that its equation of a roster bonus with a signing bonus is “[f]or purposes of determining Team Salary,” and it does not use the phrase “signing bonus allocation.” Conversely, the provision on converting non-guaranteed compensation to a signing bonus allocation does not mention roster bonuses. The League’s argument amalgamates the two statements to create a third, implicit rule that it applies to Section 9(c). It is not clear that Section 9(c) was drafted with such an interpretation in mind.

Faced with a forfeiture provision that is ambiguous at best, the district court concluded that the League’s interpretation was the least logical of the two. As the League would have it, the forfeitability of Vick’s bonuses turns on whether the Falcons guaranteed the bonuses for skill. That distinction makes little sense in the context of forfeiture. Guaranteeing a bonus for skill simply means that a player can keep the money no matter how poor his performance. Such a guarantee is clearly germane to regulating team salary because it distinguishes money that is committed to a player from money that is only tentatively slated for distribution. But there is no reason to require forfeiture because a bonus has been guaranteed for skill. Further, the district court correctly observed that the League’s position was contrary to the prior, unappealed holding in Lelie, in which the court refused to use the salary cap and minimum player salary rules to interpret Section 9(c).

(Emphasis supplied.) Justice served!

Speaking for me only