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How Tom Brady can fight (and overturn) his suspension in court

Now that Roger Goodell has held firm on upholding a four-game suspension, Tom Brady's camp has opted to take this battle to court.

Brady won't be pulling a Robert Kraft — he'll fight the good fight, and his court options are fascinating. The NFL took preemptive measures after announcing the four games stood by seeking an immediate confirmation in New York, not Minnesota where the NFLPA has had great success on appellate decisions involving the league.

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Doty presides in the 8th District Court in Minnesota, where the league is trying to avoid this potential case being heard and where the courts have tended to lean pro-labor in their findings.

No matter the court, the legal rule of thumb is that many judges prefer not to upset established, collectively bargained agreements between parties. In other words, the union (of which Brady is a member) made its bed by signing the CBA back in 2011, which allowed for Goodell to be an arbitrator, and now must sleep in it.

The union's parry to this could be that Goodell's handling of the case lacked due process, was rendered with an arbitrary ruling and was handled in a volatile and capricious manner. Brady's team can ask for an injunction, allowing Brady to sidestep a suspension until a final verdict is reached, and injuctions typically aren't that hard to get. Or it can request an expedited process that rules before the New England Patriots season opener on Sept. 10, which is 44 days from Tuesday's ruling. 

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How long might this take? Who knows? In addition to the unpredictable speed (or lack thereof) of the American justice system, there's also the strategic angle: Brady and his camp might want to strike immediately and fast-track the operation, or they could drag their heels on the process, hoping to stretch things as far as possible — perhaps even into the offseason.

Remember the StarCaps case between the NFL and NFLPA? That went on for more than two years. Stall tactics are very much an arrow — and a sharp one — in a good lawyer's quiver. There's little doubt that Goodell took his time to rule (effectively, we might add) to maximum effect, issuing his appeal finding on the eve of the Patriots reporting to training camp, so the Brady legal team could give the NFL a dose of its own medicine, except in federal court.

Once Brady's team gets to court, make no mistake: the battle will be tough. As we said, judges must be convinced that there is fairly overwhelming evidence that some serious malfeasance has taken place in how this punishment was carried out.

Here are some potential attacking points for Brady's camp:

Owner influence: If the NFLPA can present evidence that other NFL team owners tried, in any way, to pressure Goodell to uphold the full suspension, it should present it clearly. That would constitute clear partiality by Goodell, and the threat of dragging 31 owners to issue sworn affadavits might make them queasy.

Going after Goodell: The union asked for the commissioner to recuse himself from the hearing, and that was denied. Goodell's way of circumventing this was by arguing it was Troy Vincent who handed down the punishment initially, but the union might try to show how much of a farce that was. As if Goodell had no input? Sure.

Equipment rules: NFL guidelines for handling equipment (including those pesky deflated balls) indicate that team personnel — not players — are ultimately the ones responsible, and thus punishable. Not Brady. In essence, Brady got fined for something he wasn't able to get fined for, so their argument might go.

Established precedent: There is none. The CBA outlines fines, suspensions and punishments for all kinds of misdeeds. There's nothing in there about ordering balls deflated — if Brady even is guilty of that — and thus Goodell was going off script. Way off script, in fact, akin to what Greg Hardy did. Apples, oranges, all that, but you can see how the argument would be borne here. The Minnesota Vikings were caught tampering with balls with a hair dryer during games and were given a slap on the wrist — a $20,000 fine. Pair that with what Brady and the Patriots received, and you can see where they feel there's injustice.

About that guilt: Nowhere in Ted Wells' report — the 243-page, $5 million epic — does it say Brady was guilty unequivocally. That's a problem. The term "generally aware" has been a laughable point as it relates to burden of proof, and rightfully so, and it might be a main talking point in the NFLPA's case. Brady's lawyers will come out swinging at what they believe to be a sham of an investigation that proves no guilt for his client.

About those balls: Yes, the rulebook states that balls must be between 12.5 and 13.5 psi before games (a rule that has existed since the 1930s), but nowhere in there does it account for pressure loss, explainable by the Ideal Gas Law, which you surely have committed to memory by now. So NFL officials measuring balls at halftime of a cold January night might render wildly different results from, say, a preseason game in August.

In the outside world, these types of cases typically are hard to win. With the NFL and the union, though, there's precedent, with the Adrian Peterson suspension being overturned last season and with the bounty scandal — lawyered by Jeffery Kessler, who happens to be Brady's lead attorney — which was contested successfully as well.

We likely are far from any resolution on this saga. Brady is going to court, and more of this story will become public. Could it get more interesting? Oh yes.

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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at edholm@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!