The courts apparently are as exasperated with the NFL lockout as the fans.
A federal appeals panel listened to arguments on football’s labor dispute from the owners and players yesterday in St. Louis, then capped the hearing by suggesting the sides work it out — or else.
“We wouldn’t be all that hurt if you went out and settled the case,” 8th Circuit Court of Appeals judge Kermit Bye told both parties after the 90-minute session.
Bye said the three-member panel would rule “in due course” on the owners’ request to have a lower-court judge’s injunction that briefly lifted the lockout last month overruled permanently.
That decision is expected to come no later than mid-July, but Bye made it clear the panel would rather the parties resolve their ugly dispute during settlement talks that began on the side earlier this week in Chicago.
“We will keep with our business, and if that ends up with a decision, it’s probably something both sides aren’t going to like,” Bye said in court. “But it will at least be a decision.”
No wonder representatives from both sides sounded more optimistic about the settlement talks between the owners and players that began in secret on Tuesday and are slated to resume next week.
“The importance is to have the principals talk,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said at a charity appearance in North Carolina after the St. Louis hearing. “That’s what we were interested in doing, have the owners and players talk to one another. That was accomplished this week. That’s a positive sign for us.”
The NFL Players Association, whose decertification in mid-March set off the longest labor stoppage in league history, also sounded upbeat about the settlement discussions.
“We’re here today to try and lift the lockout, so players can play football,” NFLPA spokesman George Atallah said in St. Louis. “At the same time, that doesn’t mean the settlement negotiations couldn’t continue. You’ve seen that the last couple of days.”
But that’s not to say the warring sides are any closer to a new collective bargaining agreement that would avert the cancellation of games this fall.
The lingering animosity was evident during yesterday’s hearing, with legal heavyweights Theodore Olson and Paul Clement — each a former U.S. Solicitor General — lobbing bad-faith accusations.
With the Giants’ Osi Umenyiora (one of the plaintiffs in the antitrust lawsuit that is at the heart of the dispute) looking on among more than 20 players, Clement argued for the NFL that the owners should be able to extend the lockout for at least a year because the players had decertified once before in the early 1990s.
Clement also argued that the lower-court injunction violated a Depression-era federal statute preventing injunctions in labor disputes. Olson countered for the players that the union decertified previously at the owners’ request.
Many legal experts have told The Post they expect the decidedly conservative appeals panel to rule for the owners by tossing out the injunction permanently, but that doesn’t mean the NFL is in the judges’ good graces.
That was clear from the acidic closing comment from Bye, who was the lone supporting vote for the players on the temporary injunction but now — like just about everyone else — appears to be running out of patience with both sides.