NFL running back Ray Rice has settled a contract dispute with the Baltimore Ravens, pre-empting a hearing that was due to be held on Thursday into whether the team should pay him $3.52m for having dropped him in light of a graphic video of him assaulting his then fiancee.
NBC’s ProFootball Talk broke the news, citing “a league source with knowledge of the situation” who said the parties settled days before the scheduled hearing. Anonymous sources also told the Baltimore Sun and USA Today that player and team had settled.
If the Ravens indeed paid out a sum to Rice, the figure may never become public knowledge, as the terms of private settlements rarely do.
The Ravens cut Rice on 8 September 2014, hours after the website TMZ published a video of him knocking out Janay Palmer, the woman who is now his wife, in an elevator at an Atlantic City casino. The same day, the NFL suspended Rice indefinitely, despite having disciplined him with a two-game suspension months earlier.
Rice appealed the NFL ban and in November a former federal judge, Barbara Jones, sided with his argument that he had been unfairly punished twice. Jones overturned the indefinite ban, making Rice eligible to play in the league again.
Rice also filed a grievance against his old team, arguing that the Ravens wrongfully terminated his contract and therefore owed him millions in non-guaranteed base salary. An NFL arbitrator would have overseen grievance hearings on Thursday and Friday, and likely heard arguments about whether a player can be disciplined for the same action twice.
Rice was represented by NFL Players Association attorneys and Peter Ginsberg, a lawyer who has represented other athletes accused of conduct violations.
The Ravens declined to comment on the settlement. Although Rice is free to sign with a new team, none has approached him since the NFL ban lifted.
As part of a bargain with New Jersey authorities, Rice and his wife took part in a counseling program, sparing him a trial and more serious sentence after he was charged with assault for the February 2014 altercation. The couple have made strenuous efforts to rehabilitate Rice’s image and publicize their reconciliation. On Wednesday, Janay Rice wrote on Instagram: “I literally have the best husband in the world.”
An investigation by the law firm of former FBI director Robert Mueller III criticised the NFL for failing to perform a thorough investigation after Rice was first charged with assault, but it did not find evidence that the league had seen the graphic video of the incident before it imposed its initial two-game ban.
