More of a business ethics vs a strictly sports related issue so I am placing it here. Mods move if you must.
Seems they could easily re-sell the tickets in most of these circumstances. I’m not really getting why the are going after these people hammer and tong.
Was the team dickish to do this to her? Sure.
Is she an idiot for not hiring an attorney? OH HELL YES.
I’m an EMPLOYMENT attorney and I know damn well that (in my non-legal, not-your-attorney, not-admitted-in-D.C., and probably incorrect utterly worthless opinion) with a season-ticket list whose waiting period is legendary, the Washington Redskins Football Club had ample opportunity and ability to mitigate the claimed loss.
The Redskins’ damages should have been (and would maybe have been, given an adequate lawyer) the interest on the money they lost this season for the amount of time it took them to find a replacement, plus court costs.
In other words, a couple hundred bucks.
Everybody hates lawyers until they need one.
Is she even more of an idiot for not responding to the suit. OH HELL DOUBLE HELL YES. A judge can point her to free or low-cost representation, or can help her at least to defend her own rights when she shows up in pro per. Judges tend to be easier on pro per parties, and at least she could have told her side and let a judge make a decision. Even if he decided against her, the result would be no worse than it is now, and at least she’d have had a shot.
Wow. Just wow. I was a Redskins fan for 40+ years, from the time I was old enough to quit pulling for a team based on which colored jerseys they were wearing, until…
5 seconds ago.
What an unbelievably greedy, underhanded, dickish thing to do to someone who has supported your club through thick and thin. I’ve been increasingly uncomfortable with Snyder and his antics, and now the straw has landed.
So…how about those Carolina Panthers?
I think it’s their right to make sure the people who entered into contracts with them fulfill their end of the contract, but I think this is horrible for their PR and it would have been smarter for them to negotiate some other way out of this.
Not that important (because I think they are dicks) but there is no waiting list for her seat, it’s an expensive one that the Redskins have a hard time selling.
I spent a lot of my youth in the greater Washington DC area and I guess I’ve always been under the impression there were huge waiting lines of buyers for hard to get Redskin’s season tickets of all kinds. If you had them they were practically treated as legacies. You’re saying this is not the case anymore?
Dick move but any organization that relies on guranteed ticket sales has the right to protect that. She signed a contract saying she would buy these tickets.
Divorce yourself from the fact that its an old lady on hard times… I kind of call bullshit on that. She could afford 5 grand on football tickets every year up to this one. You know how much I can afford to spend on football tickets… ZERO. A well-off woman wanted out of her pledge? Oh well.
I hope she’ll resell the tickets at a profit.
Ditto on Snyder = dick
Welcome. We have cookies. 
Legally they have the right to sue but they are still dicks for doing it. Their owner is known as a real big Asshole so this is no surprise.
I never knew teams made fans sign these kind of contracts. As the article mentions some teams simply let fans give up the tickets without any problem.
The NFL is the only league that insists on TV blackouts when not all tickets are sold. All that does is punish local fans , especially now when the economy is down.
She didn’t appear in court because she thought she had a moral responsibility to pay her debts - so she’s crying because she has to pay her debt? Isn’t that what she wanted?
I guess what she wanted was for the team to “waive” her contract for a couple years. Don’t blame them for not doing that at all. I hope she gets a lawyer now at least and tries to work out a payment option.
She should have just tried to ebay her tickets. She might have made a little something that way.
The article also interviews another guy who didn’t contest his lawsuit and got a judgement against him - seriously, what do these people think the judge is just going to psychically know all the facts and find for the guy who couldn’t be bothered to show up? The Redskins are pricks, sure, but the rest of it just a story about people who sign contracts without knowing what they’re doing.
Yeah, her “real estate sales were hit”? Then again, a businesswoman should stand up for herself.
I agree with many of the posters here that the Redskins are being huge dicks here. But like you I’m also stunned that didn’t realize the importance of a having a lawyer. She works in a real estate, for crying out loud. Is there an experience in this country for the common man more ridden with legalities than buying a house?
There are lots of idiot little old ladies with real estate licenses who might sell a house or two a year. I’m in continuing education licensing classes with them all the time. I don’t get the impression she’s a particularly active agent.