You're kidding, right?
"Perspective" is not the right word choice. It's is PROSPECTIVE. Looking forward. Hypothetically. Perspective has to do with point of view. The two sound similar but mean entirely different things.
Defending the use of the word "perspective" is ridiculous. I hope you're kidding.
As for fiduciary duty, that is a very specific legal term that is normally applied to trustees or business executives regarding their obligations to assets entrusted to them on behalf of others. While it's conceivable that a special NBA partnership that happens to be called a "joint venture" contractually obligates NBA franchises to fiduciary duties, I find it unlikely.
Ed O.
I've been waiting for someone to ask about the law here, but nobody has taken the bait! Here goes.
First of all, it is a much contested legal concept. A fiduciary duty is a kind of unwritten rule, and some courts, and many legal scholars, don't like to give a wide berth to unwritten rules. Nevertheless, there is a pretty strong tradition upholding fiduciary duties in joint ventures, in some circumstances.
The landmark case in this area is from the Cardoza court in NY in the 1920's. It has a juicy quote that is used a lot:
"Joint adventurers, like copartners, owe to one another, while the enterprise continues, the duty of the finest loyalty. Many forms of conduct permissible in a workaday world for those acting at arm's length, are forbidden to those bound by fiduciary ties. A trustee is held to something stricter than the morals of the market place. Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior."
Subsequent courts have determined that joint venturer's do have duties of various kinds to partners (one duty, for example, is to avoid conflicts of interest with partners). They use several criteria to determine the nature and extent of the duties. Perhaps the most important of these is determining the nature of the business relationship between the partners. If it is a relationship characterized by contracts and arms length transactions, then they are less likely to say that unwritten rules apply.
In this case, there is no way that a court would believe that fiduciary duties should bind teams, when dealing with players. For starters, they are in an inherently conflicting situation to begin with. They are not trustees of each other. They are competitors. That's why they have contracts to bind them (the owners' agreement). And they are perfectly able to specify the rules of engagement in these contracts. No court is going to say that competitors who begin in situations of conflicting interests should somehow be bound by unwritten rules. Won't happen. Any court will say that they should be bound only to the rules they have agreed among themselves to be bound by.
Secondly, the existence of a collective bargaining agreement makes this even tougher for the Blazers. A court would never, in principle, say that unwritten rules should bind teams. This would open the doors for teams to do all kinds of things which the unions would think might violate the CBA. No, as long as there is a union around, then the written rules are the rules of the game. Period.
Net-net, there is no rule written which says that a team can't sign a player to screww over another team, and so there is no rule that will be enforced by any court. No chance. Nada. None. The Blazers can be pissed all they want, and their lawyers can write whatever they want, but it is hardly credible.
