Bidwill to Pay Terry McDonough $3M in Defamation Damages

Will the other shoe drop before the upcoming NFL Draft?

In recent years, Arizona Cardinals’ owner Michael Bidwill has begun to face the consequences for his ill-will toward current and former employees and his propensity to break NFL rules.

Terry McDonough wins $3 million from Cardinals in arbitration – NBC Sports

To quote from PFT:

The NFL’s secret, rigged, kangaroo court might not be so rigged, after all.

Publicly-filed court documents show that former Cardinals executive Terry McDonough has won $3 million from the team in the arbitration process he initiated last year.

The ruling happened on Friday. The arbitration award was filed in federal court on Monday.

McDonough’s claims included unlawful retaliation under the Arizona Employment Protection Act, intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation, and invasion of privacy.

The $3 million comes from $600,000 in emotional distress damages and $150,000 in damage to his reputation. The arbitrator also awarded McDonough a whopping $2.25 million in punitive damages against the Cardinals.

We’re in the process of digesting the 62-page ruling. There surely will be some interesting quotes and conclusions. We’ll highlight them in a subsequent post.

For now, the news is — and should be — that the NFL’s in-house arbitration process has resulted in a very rare award for a former employee of an NFL team, and a potentially unprecedented award of punitive damages against an NFL team.

Per abcnews.com:

Cardinals ordered to pay ex-VP Terry McDonough $3M for defamation – ABC News (go.com)

In a 62-page decision dated March 29, Jeffrey Mishkin, the arbitrator appointed by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, determined the Cardinals and their owner, Michael Bidwill, defamed McDonough “with malice” in a multipage statement to media organizations that accused McDonough of spousal abuse and neglect of his disabled adult daughter — allegations McDonough has denied.

Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

The most imminent question now that looms over Bidwill and the Cardinals organization is what the NFL will decide with regard to Terry McDonough’s grievance with the NFL for Michael Bidwill’s history of workplace malfeasance vis-a-vis his abusive behavior toward former team executives, coaches, staff members and clerical employees.

On the eve of the 2024 NFL Draft, will the NFL drop sanctions on Bidwill and the Cardinals two years in a row?

Last year, at the onset of the 2023 NFL Draft, the NFL determined that Bidwill and the Cardinals would have to give their 3rd round pick to the Eagles for breaking the NFL hiring policies when the team’s GM Monti Ossenfort conducted surreptitiously illicit communications with Eagles’ DC Jonathan Gannon as the Eagles were preparing to face the Chiefs in the Super Bowl.

Recently, the 49ers were stripped of a 2025 5th round pick and forced to move back their 2024 4th round pick from #131 to #135 for what was termed an accounting error for misrepresenting payroll figures at the end of the 2022 season.

Therefore, one would think that in light of the egregious claims of Bidwill’s workplace abuse that were enumerated in Terry McDonough grievance with the NFL, the subsequent corroboration of specific examples of Bidwill’s abuses that were listed in lengthy articles by ESPN and The Athletic and the rare $3M in damages that McDonough has received for Bidwill’s defamation of him through the media, the Cardinals are likely going to lose at least one and possibly more present and/or future draft picks.

As Cardinals’ fans who are feeling very excited about the team’s 11 picks in this year’s draft, we have to hope, at least for now, that the NFL is not prepared yet to impose their sanctions on Bidwill.

if there isn’t an NFL ruling before the draft, and the can is kicked further down the road, this could add an understandable context to whatever 2025 draft assets that Monti Ossenfort might be able to acquire via trades this year.

Whenever the ruling on Terry McDonough’s grievance is made, how fitting it would be if the NFL decides to try to relay the sanctions to Bidwill by attempting to dial him directly on his burner phone.