Aug 1 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge in California on Thursday threw out a $4.7 billion verdict against the National Football League in a lawsuit claiming it overcharged subscribers to its Sunday Ticket game telecasts for more than a decade.
The ruling, opens new tab by Los Angeles-based U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez followed arguments by the NFL that the verdict was unjustified and the result of a “runaway” jury.
The NFL in a statement said it welcomed the judge’s ruling. “We believe that the NFL’s media distribution model provides our fans with an array of options to follow the game they love,” the NFL said.
Lawyers for the subscribers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Eli5 How can 1 judge throw out a decision from a jury? Shouldn’t you at least need another jury?
A judge can rule that a case was unfair due to procedural issues, like that a jury arrived at its decision by evidence that shouldn’t have been admitted in the first place. There are terms in this I’m not familiar with (I only know “runaway jury” from the John Grisham novel…), but that seems to be the basis of throwing this out. I’m sure Legal Eagle will cover something as big and weird as this in the next two weeks or so if you want well-explained legal analysis of the finer points.
This happens on occasion. Essentially, the plaintiff’s expert witnesses had flawed testimony about the actual financial damage done. The judge didn’t know this would happen until after they testified. The judge also said that the only issue was the dollar figure. In other words, the evidence of price fixing was conclusive enough.
I suppose this will go to new other jury trial, and the plaintiff’s will present better expert witness testimony. What will the new dollar amount end up at? We have no idea.
Because our legal system is fucked and is a mess of loopholes if something isn’t present in a certain fashion.