If it wasn’t clear that the NFL, not the Hall of Fame, bears responsibility for the Hall of Fame Non-Game, it now is. And if it wasn’t clear that litigation is coming, is now should be.
Lawyer Michael Avenatti confirmed via email to PFT that he will be filing suit in the coming days for expenses incurred by customers beyond the cost of a ticket to an NFL game that ultimately wasn’t played. Potential damages include, in PFT’s assessment, travel expenses to Canton (for people who came to town only for the game) and lodging expenses in Canton (for those who stayed in Canton beyond the enshrinement ceremony in order to attend the game).
So far, the Hall of Fame has offered only to pay refunds at face value to those who purchased tickets. There’s a chance that this could change, months before judgment is entered in the looming class action.
“You may also recall that is was only after we brought suit over [Super Bowl XLV] that the league began to reverse course and offer fans more compensation, including certain expense reimbursement,” Avenatti said, in reference to the legal action filed on behalf of fans who showed up for the Steelers-Packers title game in Dallas with tickets that didn’t correspond to actual seats. “Legal action is one of the few things that seems to remotely get their attention and cause them to begin to think about doing right by the fans.”
Plenty of people like to complain about the filing of lawsuits; typically, those complaints come from those who routinely are sued and the lawyers who routinely are paid significant amounts of money by the hour to defend them. The reality is that the civil justice system gives private citizens a vehicle for forcing businesses to do things they otherwise wouldn’t do on their own, addressing situations in which negligent or willful misbehavior resulted in a bad outcome for the plaintiff.
There’s still time for the NFL to get ahead of the litigation and offer to reimburse expenses beyond ticket prices. It would be a great P.R. move and, more importantly, it would be the right thing to do.
The alternative for the league is to pay its lawyers a lot of money to defend the case over the next few years and ultimately face the very real prospect of having to reimburse the expenses involuntarily.