WASHINGTON — The Lawyer Basic for the District of Columbia filed a civil grievance in opposition to the N.F.L., Commissioner Roger Goodell, the Washington Commanders and the crew’s proprietor, Daniel Snyder, on Thursday, alleging that they hid sexual harassment and abuse of former crew staff over twenty years.
“What we are going to show in court docket is evident: wrongdoing and violation of D.C. residents’ shopper rights,” Karl Racine, the lawyer common, stated in a information convention. “They lied about what they knew and what they had been going to do about it.”
The civil grievance accuses the league, Snyder and the crew of colluding to deceive Washington followers “that this dysfunctional and misogynistic conduct was restricted and that they had been absolutely cooperating with an unbiased investigation.” Their statements in regards to the league’s investigation misled shoppers to purchase tickets and merchandise supporting the crew, in violation of shopper safety legal guidelines, in line with the submitting.
The league and the crew may face monetary penalties for every occasion that they’re discovered to have lied in regards to the efforts they had been making to stop and examine sexual harassment throughout the group. Every occasion courting again to July 2020, Racine stated, may deliver a high-quality of “as much as $5,000.”
He recommended that the defendants may face thousands and thousands of {dollars} in penalties.
The grievance follows a Congressional panel report launched in June that discovered proof that because the N.F.L. investigated Snyder’s crew for widespread office misconduct, he directed a “shadow investigation” to intrude with and undermine its findings.
Racine stated that the N.F.L., Goodell, Snyder and the Commanders systematically deceived the general public in regards to the league’s 10-month investigation, in 2020 and 2021, into the office tradition on the crew that included the sexual harassment of girls staff.
“They did all of this to cover the reality, shield their photographs and let the earnings roll,” Racine stated.
He added: “We maintain unhealthy actors accountable once they trigger hurt. We use all of the authorized instruments we have now to uncover the reality and proper wrongs.”
Racine stated the lawsuit was a shopper safety lawsuit that lined any materials misstatement {that a} service provider made that might impression shoppers within the District of Columbia. It’s not, he stated, a civil case that may vindicate the previous staff who claimed they had been sexually harassed as a result of that conduct occurred in Maryland and Virginia, the place the Commanders have their stadium and crew workplaces.