Former Raiders Head Coach Jon Gruden Is Suing The NFL And Commissioner Roger Goodell

Gruden has included numerous causes of action such as intentional interference with contractual relations, tortious interference with prospective economic advantage, and civil conspiracy in his legal action.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

Former Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden entered into a settlement agreement with his past employer on his way out, which included a release of claims he may have had against the team, but it appears that he intentionally failed to provide a blanket release to the National Football League and Commissioner Roger Goodell. The lack of such release language left the door open to Gruden filing suit against the NFL and Goodell, which he initiated through the filing of a complaint in the District Court for Clark County, Nevada, on November 11.

Gruden has included numerous causes of action such as intentional interference with contractual relations, tortious interference with prospective economic advantage, and civil conspiracy in his legal action. The premise of his case is that the NFL and Goodell were malicious in orchestrating a campaign that sought to destroy Gruden’s career and reputation by initially leaking private emails between Gruden and former Washington Football Team executive Bruce Allen, wherein Gruden made racist comments in a conversation related to NFL Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith.

Gruden refers to the conduct by the NFL and Goodell as “a Soviet-style character assassination” that was thereafter amplified when another batch of documents was leaked, this time surrounding homophobic and misogynistic emails. Did the NFL or Goodell intentionally leak Gruden-specific documents to the national media and, if so, do those acts create claims of civil liability?

It seems very unlikely that Gruden will be able to prove that the defendants intentionally procured the Raiders’ breach of Gruden’s employment contract without justification. Perhaps the defendants, if they did actually leak the specific email communications complained about, wished to divert attention from the Washington Football Team investigation, but Gruden will separately need to show that the acts were further intended to disrupt Gruden’s contractual relationship with the Raiders.

The expectation is that the defendants in the action brought by Gruden will soon remove the case to a federal court and perhaps even make an attempt to change the venue to one in New York, where the NFL’s headquarters is based. Thereafter, it is likely that the parties will engage in motion practice relating to an attempt by the defendants to dismiss the case and, if that does not happen, then they are likely to fight vigorously on the scope of discovery. Gruden will probably leverage his hope to uncover much, if not all, of the roughly 650,000 emails related to the investigation into the Washington Football Team that concluded the Washington Football Team’s workplace environment was highly unprofessional, particularly for women. After all, the leaked Gruden emails arose from that very investigation and it appears that the NFL has purposefully tried to avoid having the vast majority of the investigation’s emails being disclosed to the public.


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Darren Heitner is the founder of Heitner Legal. He is the author of How to Play the Game: What Every Sports Attorney Needs to Know, published by the American Bar Association, and is an adjunct professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. You can reach him by email at heitner@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter at @DarrenHeitner.

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