Raiders Today

Attorneys Speak Out on Raiders' Davis vs. Ventrelle: "Hold Your Horses."

The Las Vegas Raiders' Mark Davis finds himself in a potential legal matter against former employee Dan Ventrelle, and it has the attention of the NFL.

Hondo Carpenter

In this story:

HENDERSON, Nev.—Last summer, Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis named Dan Ventrelle as interim President of his franchise.

On Friday, Davis issued this statement, “Dan Ventrelle is no longer with the Raiders organization. We will have no further comment at this time.”

On Friday afternoon, Ventrelle texted the Las Vegas Review-Journal and issued this statement: “I have committed almost 18 years of my life to the success of the Raiders as General Counsel and President. I take that responsibility very seriously, which is why multiple written complaints from employees that Mark created a hostile work environment and engaged in other potential misconduct caused me grave concern.”

Ventrelle asserts that he confronted Davis, who did not address the matter in a way he felt he should. So Ventrelle then approached the NFL.

“(He) did not demonstrate the warranted level of concern,” Ventrelle added. “Given this, I informed the NFL of these issues and of Mark’s unacceptable response. Soon thereafter, I was fired in retaliation for raising these concerns.”

The comments by Ventrelle then led to the NFL becoming involved.

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy had this response from the NFL: “We recently became aware of these allegations and take them very seriously.  We will promptly look into the matter.”

We reached out to one of the most powerful attorneys in the nation who handles many of the most prominent cases such as this.

While they are not involved in this case, they felt the need to only comment on the condition of anonymity. They said, “Mark Davis is a lot of things; dumb is not one of them."

He is a savvy man and relies upon good counsel. While I cannot attest to the allegations of his former employee, as an attorney, I would not have advised him to terminate a whistleblower with substantive complaints.

"While not privy to the case, it would appear Mr. Dais is not concerned as an outsider. That would give me pause, such as in the case of the Duke Lacrosse team, and make me want to remind people of the innocent until proven guilty paradigm of our nation’s judicial system.”

Sam Mirejovsky from the Las Vegas firm of Sam and Ash told me exclusively this morning: “I think your contact is absolutely right. Everything that I have ever witnessed with the Raiders, and Mark Davis in particular, is a very careful and deliberative approach to big problems. They’ve certainly faced some big problems.  They seem to weigh things very carefully and follow the advice of good lawyers.”

Mirejovsky added, “I know some of the lawyers who work with the Raiders organization and Mark Davis, and they are tremendously smart and capable people. No lawyer worth his salt is going to recommend to a very large stable organization such as the Raiders to not take a legitimate case seriously. To me, everyone needs to hold their horses here a little bit and wait to see what the investigation shows.”

We are not dismissing Ventrelle’s allegation at all. The legal process will determine guilt or innocence, but what we are saying is that a collection of legal minds think, at least preliminarily, there may be more smoke than fire.

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Hondo Carpenter
HONDO CARPENTER

Hondo S. Carpenter Sr. is an award-winning sports journalist who brings decades of experience to his role as editor and publisher, and beat writer for our Las Vegas Raiders and the NFL coverage. Carpenter is a member of the PFWA, FWAA, and USBWA.

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