Bang to Gavel: SportsJudge Decisions of Note (October 2007)

October brought many new and exciting fantasy sports disputes to SportsJudge.com's docket. Below are four of the staff's favorites from this month:

(1) In the case Team Anadrol v. Vegas Baby & Flathead Yankees, No. 955-C, the Court of Fantasy Baseball ruled in a fantasy baseball arbitration that an out-of-contention owner's decision to bench all of his hitters for the final six weeks of the season in a Yahoo! 5x5 rotisserie league amounted to "illegal sabotage." While the court acknowledged that an owner of an in-contention team may choose to strategically bench his hitters in Yahoo! games to maintain strength in ratio statistics (i.e. batting average), the court found that this same action is impermissible if done only to aid one in-contention team to pass another in the standings. As a remedy, the court ordered the league standings recalculated as if the benching had never occurred, and prizes awarded accordingly.

(2) In the case Cincinnati Bowtie v. Nellie's Nuts, Index No. 904, the Court of Fantasy Basketball ruled in a fantasy basketball arbitration that when during a Yahoo! fantasy draft one owner accidentally selected Jason Terry instead of Jason Kidd, and another owner using auto-draft selected Jason Kidd in the next round, the owner using auto-draft had no obligation to return Jason Kidd to the team that had intended to draft him.

(3) In the case Commissioner v. Defending Champs & Teram Hoon, Index No. 954-T, the Court of Fantasy Football in a fantasy football arbitration upheld the trade of Peyton Manning and Edgerrin James for TJ Houshmanzadeh, Jon Kitna and Travis Henry because the "trade adequately benefited both teams." The court noted that the team trading Peyton Manning also had Derak Anderson on his roster at quarterback, and that team had a tremendous weakness at wide receiver.

(4) In the case Commissioner v. Foilage and W&P, Index No. 991-T, the Court of Fantasy Football overturned the trade of Hines Ward, Shaun Alexander and Brandon Jacobs from Foilage to W&P for Joe Jurevicius and Warrick Dunn. Because this trade weakened Foilage in both the wide receiver and running back positions, the court noted "this trade is amongst the most nonsensical this court has ever reviewed."

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The SportsJudge.com Team also wishes to salute fantasy football expert John O'Malley on O'Malley's Tallies, which was rated as the "Most Read SportsJudge Blog" for the second month in a row.

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