The Plan B free agency was a type of free agency that became active in the National Football League in February 1989. Plan B free agency permitted all teams in the NFL to preserve limited rights of no more than 37 total players a season. If a player was a protected Plan B free agent, he was incapable of signing with another team without providing his old team the first opportunity to sign him again. The rest of the players were left unprotected, liberated to negotiate contracts with the rest of the teams in the league.
Eight players sued the NFL in U.S. federal court, stating that Plan B was an unlawful restraint of trade. In 1992, a jury found that Plan B violated antitrust laws and awarded damages to the players.
Famous quotes containing the words plan, free and/or agency:
“Max Detweiler: I get a fiendish delight thinking of you as the mother of seven. How do you plan to do it?
The Baroness: Darling, haven’t you heard of a delightful little thing called boarding school?”
—Ernest Lehman (b. 1920)
“Without this, as well as with it, we could have declared our independence of Great Britain; but without it, we could not, I think, have secured our free government, and consequent prosperity. No oppressed, people will fight, and endure, as our fathers did, without the promise of something better, than a mere change of masters.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“It is possible that the telephone has been responsible for more business inefficiency than any other agency except laudanum.... In the old days when you wanted to get in touch with a man you wrote a note, sprinkled it with sand, and gave it to a man on horseback. It probably was delivered within half an hour, depending on how big a lunch the horse had had. But in these busy days of rush-rush-rush, it is sometimes a week before you can catch your man on the telephone.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)