A year and a half later, the lawsuit against the NFL, the Cowboys and Jerry Jones brought by fans who were displaced at Super Bowl XLV when temporary seating at Cowboys Stadium wasn’t available is still winding its way through the legal system.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that the fans and the league have failed to reach a settlement, and the lawyers for the fans filed a motion seeking to begin the case and to force the NFL to pay attorneys’ fees and other costs. The fans say the NFL hasn’t done enough to mollify them in settlement talks.
“The defendants purposefully delayed these proceedings for months in bad faith while falsely claiming to be truly interested in resolving the case,” the plaintiffs’ motion says.
The league, however, says its offer to the fans who were displaced was fair, and most fans accepted it.
“This motion is frivolous,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said in an e-mail to the Star-Telegram. “The overwhelming majority of the claims were resolved more than a year ago. At the plaintiffs’ counsel’s request, we agreed to participate in a mediation to determine whether there was a reasonable basis to resolve what remains of the suit following our successful voluntary reimbursement program with fans. The mediation regrettably was not successful, but we acted with good faith in the process. We are disappointed the plaintiffs’ attorneys would resort to filing a baseless motion.”
The temporary seating fiasco affected about 3,200 fans. Seats were eventually found for most of them, but a few hundred didn’t get seats at all. The fans who were moved to other seats were offered refunds or a ticket to a future Super Bowl, while the ones who weren’t seated at all were offered their choice of a one-time payment of $5,000, or $2,400 and a trip to a future Super Bowl with airfare and hotel included. The fans who didn’t accept those offers are the ones whose lawsuit continues.