The recent amendment to the Brian Flores civil complaint adds new allegations regarding a “culture of retaliation,” based on his decision to assert his legal rights in court. In reviewing the document, something stood out.
In paragraph 235 of the third amended complaint, Flores alleges that the Dolphins failed to make contractually-required severance payments. In paragraph 236, Flores claims that the Dolphins also have tried to recover money already paid to Flores.
“To make matters worse, after this lawsuit was filed, the Dolphins filed a letter with Commissioner Goodell seeking an arbitration over claims that Mr. Flores should be required to return hundreds of thousands of dollars of earned income,” Flores alleges. “The only reason that the Dolphins filed this request is because Mr. Flores filed this suit and opposed the team’s discriminatory conduct.”
For now, there are no details about the alleged effort to recover from Flores money he had already been paid. (Most notably, what did Flores supposedly do that justifies seeking “hundreds of thousands of dollars of earned income”?) Those facts undoubtedly will emerge as the case proceeds.
The recent decision of the Supreme Court to not accept the NFL’s appeal on the issue of arbitration confirms that the case will proceed in court. Barring a settlement (and this could be a good time for the league to start making offers to Flores in an effort to keep all sorts of potentially unflattering facts from coming to light) much will be learned about all aspects of Flores’s claims against the NFL, the Dolphins, and multiple other teams.
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