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Garvey ruling no real surprise By Darren Rovell ESPN.com | |||||||||||||||||
It should not come as a surprise that the Supreme Court overturned a Court of Appeals decision that would have given former major-league player Steve Garvey a $3 million share of the $280 million labor settlement Major League Baseball owners paid to the league's player's association for colluding to hold down player salaries.
That's because arbitrators rulings are rarely overturned in the first place, according to legal experts and a prominent arbitrator.
"Arbitrators, as third party negotiators, have a great deal of power with the leagues and the unions," said Mark Conrad, associate professor of legal and ethical studies at Fordham University, and publisher of Sportslawnews.com. "It's therefore extremely rare -- as in 99 out of 100 cases -- for a lower court to overturn an arbitrator's ruling."
But this was also an unusual arbitration, said Roger Abrams, who was a Major League Baseball arbitrator for 25 years, hearing more than 900 cases (none of which were overturned). He said it was an "internal arbitration" of sorts because the case dealt with how the union was to divvy up the money.
Abrams also said that the arbitrator that ruled on the case, Thomas Roberts, was later fired by Major League Baseball, as only one side is needed to fire an arbitrator.
"Arbitration is arbitration," Abrams said. "The whole point of the process is to keep the sides from going to court. So it's expected that the courts uphold the decision and say, 'Get out of our court.'"
Although he had not seen the complete ruling, Conrad said he was surprised the decision wasn't unanimous and that one Supreme Court justice upheld the lower court's decision to award Garvey a payment. Justice John Paul Stevens was the lone dissenting vote in the Supreme Court's 8-1 decision handed down Monday.
"The only way a lower court should have reversed the arbitrator's findings was if the arbitrator's decision was completely beyond reason or if there was a blatant conflict of interest," Conrad said.
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