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WASHINGTON — The legal professional basic for the District of Columbia says his workplace is submitting a civil client safety lawsuit towards the Washington Commanders, proprietor Dan Snyder, the NFL and commissioner Roger Goodell.
Lawyer Basic Karl Racine introduced the civil grievance for colluding to deceive district residents at a information convention Thursday.
Racine mentioned the group and league violated D.C. customers’ rights based mostly on what they knew in regards to the group’s office misconduct, alleging Snyder lied about his information of the state of affairs.
4 posters flanked Racine throughout his announcement, outlining a few of the historical past of the group’s rebranding efforts that included references to D.C. and its flag and the historical past of the NFL’s investigation into the group’s office tradition.
“Dan Snyder assured followers that he would absolutely cooperate with the investigation and the outcomes might be trusted,” one of many posters learn. “That was a lie: He repeatedly tried to intervene, and the followers couldn’t belief outcomes that have been by no means made public. As a result of Snyder had a veto.”
The findings of Beth Wilkinson’s investigation weren’t launched in July 2021 when the league fined the group $10 million for having a poisonous office tradition. The ultimate poster learn: “Followers’ outrage intensified when it grew to become clear that Snyder lied to them: There could be no transparency and no reckoning. That impacted client spending choices.”
Legal professionals Lisa Banks and Debra Katz, who signify greater than 40 former group staff, mentioned the civil grievance “is additional proof of what we have lengthy recognized: that each the Commanders and the NFL have engaged in deception and lies designed to hide the group’s a long time of sexual harassment and abuse, which has impacted not solely the victims of that abuse, but in addition customers within the District of Columbia.”
They added, “The submitting of this grievance additionally marks an vital step in validating the experiences of the courageous ladies and men who got here ahead and in reaching, for the primary time, a stage of transparency into the scope of the misconduct.”
The legal professional basic calling a information convention caught the Commanders without warning, in accordance with a press release from a spokesperson Wednesday that mentioned they discovered about it on social media.
“The Commanders have absolutely cooperated with the AG’s investigation for almost a 12 months,” the spokesperson mentioned. “As not too long ago as Monday, a lawyer for the group met with the AG who didn’t recommend at the moment that he supposed to take any motion and, actually, revealed elementary misunderstandings of the underlying info.”
The group is being investigated on a number of fronts, together with by the attorneys basic of D.C. and Virginia, Congress and the league. NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy final week mentioned former U.S. Lawyer Mary Jo White’s overview on behalf of the league is ongoing and there’s no timetable for when it is going to be accomplished.
The Snyders introduced final week they employed Financial institution of America Securities to look into promoting half or the entire group. A group spokesperson mentioned they have been “exploring all choices” regarding the group that Forbes values at $5.6 billion.
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