Ex-Raiders Coach Gruden Sues NFL Alleging Bid to Destroy Him
Ex-Raiders Coach Gruden Sues NFL Alleging Bid to Destroy Career
(Bloomberg) -- Jon Gruden, who resigned as coach of the Las Vegas Raiders over racist and homophobic emails, is suing the National Football League for allegedly seeking to destroy his reputation by leaking the documents.
In the lawsuit, filed on Thursday in state court in Nevada, Gruden claims that the NFL and Commissioner Roger Goodell waged “a malicious and orchestrated campaign” to ruin his “career and reputation.” He refers to “massive financial damages” he incurred as a result, including “the loss of the balance of his $100 million contract, less offsets, which was to run through the 2027 season.”
Referring to emails in which he criticized the commissioner, Gruden said in the suit that “it is certainly not within Commissioner Goodell’s authority to disclose confidential information to the media or to pressure a team to fire one of its employees” as retribution.
NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy said in a statement that the allegations were “entirely meritless” and that the NFL would “vigorously defend” itself against them.
Gruden resigned last month amid revelations that he used racist, homophobic and misogynist language in emails to Bruce Allen, the Washington Football Team’s former president, from 2011 to 2018, when Gruden worked for ESPN. He claims in the lawsuit that the NFL leaked the emails partly to distract from criticism of how it handled its investigation of reports of sexual and verbal abuse of women employed by the Washington team.
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Adam Hosmer-Henner, Gruden’s lawyer, said in a statement that the NFL and Goodell “selectively leaked Gruden’s private correspondence” to news media to damage his reputation “and force him out of his job.”
The emails emerged from about 650,000 collected in the league’s investigation of the Washington team. The lawsuit contrasts “the formalities” of that probe with the “Soviet-style character assassination” of Gruden.
The case is Jon Gruden v. the National Football League et al., A-21-844043-B, Eighth Judicial District Court, Clark County, Nevada.
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