Lawsuits over Palace fight show a culture of litigation
By Daniel Howes / The Detroit News
It may be the ugliest fracas so far in American sports, but you can bet a few will emerge from the Battle at The Palace a little richer.
It won't be the owners, who'll spend precious capital to beef up security and convince skeptics their game hasn't been hijacked by thugs. It won't be the players, whose sky-high salaries, ultra-rich lifestyles and often infantile behavior already make them suspect in the eyes of John Q. Fan.
It will be the lawyers and the gold-diggers who hire them. The ink on the NBA's unprecedented punishments is barely dry and the official investigations into last Friday's fisticuffs are still ongoing, but already "aggrieved" fans are suing (through their lawyers) the Indiana Pacers and three of their players. There will be more to come.
This is America, after all, where we don't really end our fights. We move them into courtrooms "to make someone pay," whether they belong there or not.
Why not seize the chance to make some easy cash off fat-cat owners and the millionaire jocks they support if the jocks can't control themselves? If the Palace Brawl exemplifies a lot of what's wrong in modern American society, which it mostly does, so will the legal brouhaha that's sure to follow.
I'm not talking about the official investigations into who threw the first cup or flung a chair into the melee. Or about the beefs of those who were hurt and have a right to file legit claims. I'm talking about the lawsuits pursued to reach a pot of mostly undeserved gold.
Our litigation culture and the lawyers who drive it make very comfortable livings off events like last Friday's. They get someone to blame, which is never their client, and they get a percentage of our winnings. We get the unexpected windfall, even if we might have been one of the people who taunted, heaved a beer or took a swing at one of the Pacers.
How many of the fans who mixed it up with Ron Artest and Jermaine O'Neal and Stephen Jackson stepped into the punches instead of away from them? How many immediately recognized economic opportunity in chaos, stepped in front of flying fists and drew the foul?
It's hard to know. But considering our new cultural propensity for self-denigration in pursuit of the almighty dollar -- witness the popularity of inane reality TV and Jerry Springer-style talk shows -- would it really be that surprising?
Nope. There's big money in humiliation nowadays. And there's big money in litigation, particularly if overpaid juvenile delinquents and the people who profit from them are reckless enough to make themselves targets.
It's a pathetic commentary that the most-enduring legacy of the Palace Brawl is likely to be Oakland County court files and increased billings for lawyers.
The NBA will keep playing. Most owners will keep paying big money to those who give them the best chance to win, even if some of those players are trouble waiting to happen.
Fans will keep pumping cash into the system because more than a few of them relish the controversy, the ugliness and the glitz.
If, however, you've seen enough, close your wallet and stay home. That would get their attention.
Daniel Howes' column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be reached at (313) 222-2106 or at dchowes@detnews.com.
