NEW YORK -- The battle between the NFL and the USFL grinds on with the USFL's apparent intention to seek a new trial limited to the question of damages.
Stunned by a jury's $1 award in the league's antitrust suit against the NFL, USFL owners moved their meeting in New York to Monday -- it had been scheduled for Aug. 6 -- to discuss whether to play this fall and the future of their litigation.
After lawyers for the leagues met Wednesday with U.S. District Judge Peter Leisure, USFL attorney Harvey Myerson explained the four options his struggling clients have:
-- The USFL could ask for a new trial limited to damages only.
'It's my view that would be an appropriate vehicle to take,' Myerson said.
-- The judge could order a new trial on all issues.
-- The judge could enter a judgment 'notwithstanding the verdict', that is, set it aside and make his own ruling. Myerson and NFL co-counsel Robert Fiske disagreed whether the judge could make any adjustment to the $1 jury award.
-- The USFL could go directly to the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and appeal on questions of law.
The league will file post-trial motions with Leisure, Myerson said, and part of the USFL's motions will be based on at least two of the six jurors' comments in print and on television indicating their confusion about whether $1 in damages could be increased by the judge.
'We do not think that the verdict makes sense,' Myerson said.
Antitrust law requires the damages to be tripled, which means the USFL is to receive $3 fromits rival league. The 4-year-old USFL, which once had 18 teams and is now reduced to eight, had been seeking up to $1.7 billion.
Leisure set a hearing for Sept. 3 in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to consider post-trial motions related to the controversial verdict.
'Our position is the jury verdict is a final verdict,' Fiske said. 'You cannot upset a jury verdict based on statements of jurors unless there is a situation where a juror is subject to extraneous pressure from outside the jury room.'
He said the NFL was considering whether to make a post-trial motion to set aside the jury's finding of monopolization against the league.
The jury's $1 award -- which some of the jurors later described as a compromise between a group of three who believed the USFL had proven its claims that the NFL had conspired to destroy the younger league, and three who thought the NFL had monopoly power but had not tried to use it against the USFL -- stunned USFL owners and league staff.
'It really is disappointing to hear the NFL trumpet that it won,' said USFL Commissioner Harry Usher. 'If I had just been found guilty of violating the antitrust laws of this country, I wouldn't walk out of the court and say I was vindicated.'
