‘Deflategate’ brings Tom Brady and Roger Goodell to court

“But maybe the most direct evidence is what Brady testified in his appeal hearing, that Mr. McNally would not have deflated the footballs unless he explicitly asked him to do so”, Nash said.

The federal judge overseeing the Deflategate case ordered Brady and Goodell to show up in his courtroom in person Wednesday for a settlement conference.

Rosenberg said that Brady looks like he’s frowning and looking down because he spent most of the hearing checking his cellphone.

The NFL wanted the suspension confirmed in court in New York, while Brady hoped to have the case heard in Minnesota.

The NFL, the players’ union and superstar quarterback Tom Brady are at odds about a four game suspension he received for using underinflated footballs.

“You might say he got no competitive advantage”.

Goodell and Brady arrived at the federal courthouse in New York on Wednesday morning to meet with U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman.

At one point, the judge also seemed to try to defuse the controversy, saying: “This Deflategate”.

The NFLPA and Brady, meanwhile, are arguing that the court should vacate Brady’s suspension on the grounds that he didn’t have notice of the policies and penalties he was subjected to, and that the discipline in his case was the product of a “fundamentally unfair arbitration proceeding”, in which Goodell was an “evidently partial” arbitrator.

It would be interesting to know whether or not the NFL spoke with Berman about his insistence on dredging up details of the Wells investigation.

Berman also met privately with each side, including Brady and Goodell, before and after the hearing in an effort to reach a settlement before the Patriots’ season begins on September 10.

On Tuesday, Berman asked Goodell and Brady, along with lawyers, to appear before him privately a half hour before a public court session.

Kessler, however, said Brady had followed the advice of his lawyer in declining to hand over his communications, and said the quarterback routinely destroys his old phones to avoid unwanted leaks to the media.

The judge asked fewer questions of Jeffrey Kessler, the lawyer for the N.F.L. Players Association, which is representing Brady.

A federal judge put the NFL on the defensive, demanding to know what evidence directly links Brady to deflating footballs and belittling the drama of the controversy.

Brady arrived in another black SUV less than five minutes later and was greeted with cheers as he walked in wearing a stylish pair of black sunglasses.

The NFL wants Brady to accept the findings of the Wells report which led to the governing body imposing a four-game ban. Berman called them together at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday to be briefed on any progress in advance of the 11 a.m. scheduled hearing, amid reports settlement talks have not been productive.

The next court date is August 19. Both men went through a security sweep like everyone else going to court.