Don Van Natta Jr.
The National Football League Players Association has fired the veteran lawyer who sued the union and top executives last month, according to a court document filed in federal court this week.
Heather McPhee, the NFLPA’s associate general counsel since 2009, revealed in a court filing that the union fired her Dec. 30. The dismissal came less than two weeks after she sued the union, its former executive director, Lloyd Howell Jr., and two current senior executives for allegedly conspiring to keep her from cooperating with a yearlong federal criminal inquiry into union finances.
Last August, McPhee had been put on paid administrative leave for alleged workplace “misconduct” after she had repeatedly raised legal concerns about union leaders’ decisions. She also alleged that executives had tried to keep her from testifying before a federal grand jury now investigating the NFLPA and the Major League Baseball Players Association.
In her federal lawsuit, filed last month, McPhee accused the current and former executives of illegal misconduct, sex discrimination, breach of fiduciary duty and retaliation as she prepared to become the star witness in the yearlong criminal inquiry being conducted by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn.
McPhee did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Union spokesperson Brandon Parker declined to comment on the McPhee firing, saying the union doesn’t discuss personnel matters. The two current executives being sued by McPhee are longtime union general counsel Tom DePaso and Matt Curtin, a Howell hire who is now the president of Players Inc., a union licensing arm.
Separately, multiple sources told ESPN the union placed Craig Jones, a veteran security and operations employee at NFLPA’s Washington, D.C., headquarters, on administrative leave this week.
One source said one of the union concerns about Jones was that he had spoken with an ESPN reporter last summer about Howell’s decision to use union resources to turn two parking garage spaces into one for his Porsche Cayenne Turbo. He had the new space emblazoned with the number 32, an homage to the jersey worn by O.J. Simpson, Jones told ESPN in a story that published July 23. A second source said a formal complaint had been filed against Jones last summer.
Parker declined to discuss the matter, and Jones did not return several messages seeking comment Thursday.
In an email with ESPN last July, Jones said he had been reprimanded by superiors for talking with the reporter. He told ESPN that his bosses reminded him “that all interaction with media must go through the director of communications.”
“I ask myself why am I receiving blowback for my email, which I describe as an act of love for all of my colleagues who were victims of the marionette strings of strip-club dreams,” Jones wrote in the email.
Last July, Howell resigned as ESPN prepared to report that he had used union funds to pay for a car service from a Fort Lauderdale airport to a Miami strip club and had sought union reimbursement for a visit to an Atlanta strip club accompanied by a pair of union employees.
McPhee’s declaration revealing she had been fired was filed in response to a union motion to seal portions of her Dec. 18 complaint. Parker declined to say why the union is trying to seal a 51-page complaint that has been public for more than a month.
