The Game
Mike Florio is a lawyer and a broadcast contributor to NBC’s Football Night In America and Sunday Night Football’s Post Game Show.
After graduating from Central Catholic High School in Wheeling in 1983, Florio said he pursued an engineering career at Carnegie Mellon. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with two engineering degrees and from West Virginia University’s law school in 1991.
Florio began writing for a now-defunct site called NFLtalk.com in June 2000. When that site went under and was bought out by ESPN.com, Florio got hired on there and wrote a rumor and news report. After his six-month contract expired with ESPN.com, he decided to start his own site.
In 2001 Florio started his wildly popular sports blog ProFootballTalk.com which is now an affiliate of NBC Sports. He still owns and writes for the site.
Local ESPN Radio host John Granato caught up with him recently on the Dejaun Watson lawsuit.
John Granato: Mike, How are you?
Mike Florio: Doing great. How are you guys?
John Granato: In your opinion as a lawyer, what do you think the scorecard reads right now, Tony Buzbee versus Rusty Hardin?
Mike Florio: Well, it depends what court we’re talking about. A court of law, Hardin has the only victory in the only skirmish that they’ve had, which is forcing the names of the plaintiffs onto the lawsuits, have resulted in one of the lawsuits being dropped, although it could be refiled. Court of public opinion, I think overall, Buzbee’s been mopping up the floor with Hardin from day one. Even before Hardin was involved, Buzbee’s been winning. I don’t agree with all of his tactics, but I think he’s done a very good job of trying the case in the court of public opinion.
Rusty Hardin is seeing how this is going with the public, maybe he’ll think I can’t go to court with this because I see how bad it is for Deshaun publicly.
Mike Florio: Well, it’s more than that, too, because Deshaun is inherently a public individual. Putting pressure on him through those channels relates to and translates to settlement value. You know, at the end of the day, there is a loose number that gets placed on any civil litigation, and a typical personal injury case, car accident, It’s driven by the medical bills, lost wages, other out-of-pocket expenses. That becomes the primary factor for ultimately putting a value on the case for settlement purposes as you try to get it worked out before you roll the dice with the jury. With a case like this where there really isn’t any tangible out-of-pocket expense you can point to, the value has to come from somewhere. And from Deshaun Watson’s perspective, the fact that this could put his football career on hold until these cases are resolved and the longer this lasts, he’s eventually going to be put in a position where you have to choose between invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination or testifying. And if he pleads the fifth, he’s basically forfeiting the civil cases. And if he testifies, he could get twisted up into the kind of knots that would be a blueprint for a prosecutor if someone decides to actually proceed with criminal charges. So there’s value in making this all disappear. And I don’t mean that in any way other than handling it the right way, giving the individuals involved a sense of quasi justice, quasi day in court.
John Granato: But at this point, why would it be OK if you’re Buzbee? Why would I settle when I can possibly get a heck of a lot more. How much am I going to settle for?
Mike Florio: Well, it all depends upon the timing. And right now, if Deshaun Watson is trying to get Tony Buzbee’s attention, obviously through Rusty Hardin and other lawyers working with Hardin, I think it’s in Buzbee’s best interest to be unpredictable and erratic right now because you sense that there is urgency by Deshaun Watson to get this settled now. At the right time, Buzbee needs to swoop in with an offer that Deshaun Watson can’t refuse and that if he does, it’s only going to get worse later. See I think part of what Buzbee is trying to prove now to Hardin, to Watson himself and anyone who’s paying attention when the opportunity arises to take care of this, you need to take care of it because you had opportunities before and you failed. So that opportunity is going to swing around again at some point. And I think Buzbee if he understands and I assume he does, how the football side of this works, there’s a sweet spot coming up to try to resolve these cases and there’s value in getting them resolved before you pull the pin on the grenade that results in Deshaun Watson being subject to aggressive questioning in a deposition before you really start putting a lot of time and effort into the cases.
There arguably is a point once we go past it, it doesn’t matter anymore to Deshaun Watson. Let’s just hunker down and fight. I still think the NFL is going to take action, even if he would find a way to resolve everything right now.
John Granato: None of this might have happened, Mike, if he had settled this first case before it became public.
Mike Florio: We don’t know how many more there would have been. We don’t know how many others Buzbee already had lined up. And one of the concerns, when you’re the individual who faces this demand for settlement is once we agree to one. When’s the next one, when’s the next one, when’s the next one? And that’s one of the reasons why these settlements are always confidential. But you make a settlement demand and I frankly think one hundred thousand dollars as an opening settlement demand is incredibly reasonable because it means there’s room to move. And where this went off the rails, I believe, is when Scott Gaffield said to Tony Buzbee, essentially, give us more information or make a different demand. You just don’t do that. That’s the one thing that people need to understand. If it breaches the etiquette of settlement talks, of negotiations of any kind between lawyers, you don’t ask a lawyer to bid against himself.