November 14, 2011 8:30 PM
Switching Sides: Owners’ Lawyer in NFL Lockout, David Boies Signs on With NBA Players
Posted by Brian Baxter
The National Basketball Association’s 2011-2012 season appears doomed, and David Boies, the man who once took on Microsoft, could soon have another high-profile antitrust battle on his hands.
That’s the way things are shaping up after NBA players rejected the latest offer by owners for a new collective bargaining agreement on Monday and announced that they hired Boies, Schiller Flexner for a possible antitrust suit against the league.
But does Boies’s work for the National Football League in a similar antitrust dispute with its players this summer present a conflict given his current representation of the National Basketball Players Association, which will become a trade association if decertification occurs?
The NBPA is already being represented by Dewey LeBoeuf global litigation chair Jeffrey Kessler, who cochairs his firm’s sports practice. Dewey and Kessler also represented NFL players in their labor fight with the league over the summer. By hiring Boies, the NBPA could get a valuable peek inside the playbook of a litigator
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