NFL players' union takes a hit in court

The civil court award included $7.1 million in actual damages and $21 million in punitive damages.

"If you do the math, it comes out to $13,000 per class member," said Ron Katz, the Bay Area attorney who represented 2,062 former NFL players, including 17 Hall of Fame members. "I think the former players are going to be very satisfied."

However, the lawyers and judge must still decide how to divvy up the award, some of which will go toward paying attorneys.

Herb Adderley, the former Green Bay Packers great and Hall of Fame member who initiated the class-action lawsuit more than two years ago, said Monday that the financial award will "help a lot of guys, and, hopefully, change the union's ways of taking advantage of the retired players."

Richard Berthelsen, the union's acting executive director, said outside court that the union would ask the trial judge, U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup, to toss out the verdict. If that fails, the union intends to appeal.

"It's an unjust verdict, and we are confident it will be overturned," union lawyer Jeffrey Kessler said.

The two-week trial that ended Monday when the 10-member jury returned a unanimous verdict steered clear of the highly charged disagreement over pension, disability and medical benefits that is pitting many NFL retirees against the union and the football league.

Early in the trial, Alsup ordered former players and their attorneys to focus solely on the marketing agreements. Alsup also instituted a gag order that prohibited former players and the union from discussing the case.

Adderley and other former players alleged that union leadership, including Gene Upshaw, the late executive director, was willfully ignoring the contracts that many retired players had signed with the anticipation of sharing in the wealth created when sports marketers use the images of six or more current or retired NFL players in video games, sports apparel, trading cards and other sports marketing applications.

Adderley, who wept when the verdict was read, said that former players uncovered a 2001 letter from a union executive that directed Electronic Arts Inc. to scramble images of retired players to avoid royalty payments for the popular "Madden NFL" video game.