Read Online The Making of Donald Trump by David Cay Johnston - Free Book Online
Authors: David Cay Johnston
Tags: Comedy
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“he wouldn’t have created baseball.”
Antitrust litigation is a legal specialty as arcane as tax law. Mastering antitrust law requires years of experience and a grounding in the subtle economics of anti-competitive behavior, as well as a thorough understanding of past court decisions. Such a suit would require a top antitrust litigator with a record of success with juries. This was not to be.
The lawsuit was signed by Trump’s mentor and attack dog, Roy Cohn.As the two men announced the lawsuit on October 18, 1984, Cohn said he had a list of NFL owners on a secret committee “created exclusively for the purpose of combatting the USFL.” Reporters asked for proof. “We have reliable reason to believe we know who they are and what they are doing,” Cohn replied. When reporters persisted, Cohn channeled his patron, Senator Joseph McCarthy, who would wave a paper on which he claimed to have the names of communist agents in high-level positions in the federal government, but whom he never identified. Like McCarthy, Cohn declined to name names.
For the trial, Trump convinced the other USFL team owners to hire Harvey D. Myerson, a colorful litigator with no expertise in antitrust litigation. The federal court trial lasted forty-eight days, filled with mind-numbing testimony about law and economics, as well as testimony from Trumphimself, claiming NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle had tried to buy him off—an accusation that could well be an indictable offense. A judge handling the case seemed unimpressed with this, writing without further comment that Trump “testified that he was offered an NFL franchise by Commissioner Rozelle in exchange for his blocking the USFL’s proposed move to the fall and his preventing the league from filing the instant action. Rozelle denied that he made such an offer to Trump.”
After five days of deliberation, the jury found that the NFL had indeed engaged in criminal behavior when, as an appeals court later put it, the league “willfully acquired or maintained monopoly power in a market consisting of major-league professional football in the United States.”They awarded the USFL damages in the amount of one dollar.
Under the Sherman Antirust Act, the award was automatically tripled to three dollars.
The tiny damages sent a powerful message, which many at the time interpreted as both acknowledgment of the illegal monopoly and recognition that the USFL should not have taken up two months of the jurors’ lives by seeking quick-and-easy riches from a lawsuit.
Years later, after the Supreme Court declined to hear the matter, the NFL sent a check to the USFL, adding to the three dollars the legally required interest: seventy-six cents. The uncashed check remains stored in USFL executive director Steve Ehrhart’s Memphis safe-deposit box, no doubt worth more as sports memorabilia than its face value.
Trump’s legal strategy had failed. The networks wouldn’t have to worry about broadcasting a fall USFL season. On top of that, they were annoyed by the lawsuit. They were not defendants themselves, but they were so integral to the scheme the jury examined that they were forced to spend money protectingtheir own interests. Within minutes of the jury’s verdict, USFL team owners were telling reporters it was over. The USFL promptly folded, and what could have been a successful long-term enterprise turned to dust; the smart business strategy of David Dixon had been fumbled by a disastrous Trumpian legal gamble.Myerson (who later spent seventy months in prison for tax evasion and years of overbilling in what prosecutors called “a one-man crime wave”) was mystified by the verdict and promised an appeal.
In 1988, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals explicitly rejected the theory Trump had sold to the other owners—that a lawsuit was an appropriate way to force the NFL to merge with the USFL. The court, in the formal language of legal opinions, chastised both Trump and the owners who went
Antitrust litigation is a legal specialty as arcane as tax law. Mastering antitrust law requires years of experience and a grounding in the subtle economics of anti-competitive behavior, as well as a thorough understanding of past court decisions. Such a suit would require a top antitrust litigator with a record of success with juries. This was not to be.
The lawsuit was signed by Trump’s mentor and attack dog, Roy Cohn.As the two men announced the lawsuit on October 18, 1984, Cohn said he had a list of NFL owners on a secret committee “created exclusively for the purpose of combatting the USFL.” Reporters asked for proof. “We have reliable reason to believe we know who they are and what they are doing,” Cohn replied. When reporters persisted, Cohn channeled his patron, Senator Joseph McCarthy, who would wave a paper on which he claimed to have the names of communist agents in high-level positions in the federal government, but whom he never identified. Like McCarthy, Cohn declined to name names.
For the trial, Trump convinced the other USFL team owners to hire Harvey D. Myerson, a colorful litigator with no expertise in antitrust litigation. The federal court trial lasted forty-eight days, filled with mind-numbing testimony about law and economics, as well as testimony from Trumphimself, claiming NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle had tried to buy him off—an accusation that could well be an indictable offense. A judge handling the case seemed unimpressed with this, writing without further comment that Trump “testified that he was offered an NFL franchise by Commissioner Rozelle in exchange for his blocking the USFL’s proposed move to the fall and his preventing the league from filing the instant action. Rozelle denied that he made such an offer to Trump.”
After five days of deliberation, the jury found that the NFL had indeed engaged in criminal behavior when, as an appeals court later put it, the league “willfully acquired or maintained monopoly power in a market consisting of major-league professional football in the United States.”They awarded the USFL damages in the amount of one dollar.
Under the Sherman Antirust Act, the award was automatically tripled to three dollars.
The tiny damages sent a powerful message, which many at the time interpreted as both acknowledgment of the illegal monopoly and recognition that the USFL should not have taken up two months of the jurors’ lives by seeking quick-and-easy riches from a lawsuit.
Years later, after the Supreme Court declined to hear the matter, the NFL sent a check to the USFL, adding to the three dollars the legally required interest: seventy-six cents. The uncashed check remains stored in USFL executive director Steve Ehrhart’s Memphis safe-deposit box, no doubt worth more as sports memorabilia than its face value.
Trump’s legal strategy had failed. The networks wouldn’t have to worry about broadcasting a fall USFL season. On top of that, they were annoyed by the lawsuit. They were not defendants themselves, but they were so integral to the scheme the jury examined that they were forced to spend money protectingtheir own interests. Within minutes of the jury’s verdict, USFL team owners were telling reporters it was over. The USFL promptly folded, and what could have been a successful long-term enterprise turned to dust; the smart business strategy of David Dixon had been fumbled by a disastrous Trumpian legal gamble.Myerson (who later spent seventy months in prison for tax evasion and years of overbilling in what prosecutors called “a one-man crime wave”) was mystified by the verdict and promised an appeal.
In 1988, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals explicitly rejected the theory Trump had sold to the other owners—that a lawsuit was an appropriate way to force the NFL to merge with the USFL. The court, in the formal language of legal opinions, chastised both Trump and the owners who went
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