ST. PAUL, MINN. -- The NFL on Monday filed an appeal to a judge's ruling blocking the suspensions of three Saints players and two Minnesota Vikings players.
Originally, lawyers for the league, the players and the NFL Players Association were to file documents in U.S. District Court in St. Paul today outlining a schedule for further hearings on the suspensions of Saints players Deuce McAllister, Will Smith and Charles Grant, who all tested positive for a banned supplement last summer.
Vikings defensive linemen Pat Williams and Kevin Williams, who tested positive for the same supplement, also are part of the lawsuit.
Earlier this month, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson blocked the NFL's suspension of the five players. Magnuson said he needed more time to examine evidence that, as the players alleged, the league mishandled the suspensions.
Magnuson issued an injunction that lifted the four-game suspensions, and that remains in place.
He instructed lawyers for both sides to devise a schedule for further hearings and for discovery -- that is, the ability of the players' attorneys to interview NFL officials involved in the arbitration that triggered the suspensions.
According to the documents submitted in federal court late Monday, the NFL asked Magnuson to dismiss the players' case and, instead, appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which is based in St. Louis.
"This is an effort by the NFL to delay discovery into the full extent of the involvement of the league office in the decision to conceal health information about StarCaps from the NFL players," NFLPA lawyer Jeffrey Kessler said. "Judge Magnuson will now have to decide the immediate schedule in the case while the appeal proceeds through the courts."
An NFL spokesman had no comment.
As for the exact timing of future court proceedings, that's uncertain, but it appears as if there will be no significant action on the suspensions until January.
At the center of the players' case is whether the NFL advised the players of the potential harmful effects of bumetanide, a banned diuretic contained in a supplement called StarCaps. One of the reasons the diuretic is on the NFL's list of banned substances is because it can hide the use of steroids. The players have said they took StarCaps, a weight-control supplement, without knowing the banned ingredient was in there or that it could be harmful to their health.
The league has said players are responsible for what they ingest. The league also argued that disciplinary matters are subject to collective bargaining-linked arbitrations, not to federal court proceedings.
