His complaints related to the Commanders could each result in potentially millions of dollars of penalties. In the first complaint, if a jury determined that the league and the team had lied about their investigation into sexual harassment at the organization, they could be fined “up to $5,000” for each instance in which they misrepresented their efforts.
Courts have broad discretion to determine what constitutes a violation.
In contrast with Racine’s earlier suit, damages in the consumer-protection lawsuit filed on Thursday are more easily quantifiable because it seeks to identify money that may have been withheld from Washington consumers and other businesses.
The team and N.F.L. did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The charges in the complaint on Thursday were originally brought to light in a hearing held by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which began an investigation of the team in October 2021. Numerous former team employees spoke to the congressional committee at a round table in February, including Jason Friedman, who for 24 years worked in the team’s ticketing office.
He accused the team of keeping “two sets of books” in order to conceal hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue that was supposed to be shared with all 32 N.F.L. franchises. He also claimed that the team had not properly refunded as much as $5 million in refundable security deposits to season-ticket holders.
In April, the House committee referred the allegations involving potential ticket fraud to the Federal Trade Commission. According to an ESPN report, the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia is also looking into claims of financial malfeasance made against the team. The team has denied the charges and sent the F.T.C. 102 pages of support documents to disprove the allegations. The F.T.C. has not commented on its investigation.
The allegations made to Congress prompted the N.F.L. to hire Mary Jo White, an attorney and former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to begin a new investigation into the Commanders and Snyder.
The problems facing Snyder and the Commanders, combined with the poor performance of the team on the field and the league’s lowest attendance, have irked the N.F.L.’s other owners, who have privately discussed ousting Snyder. Twenty-four of the 32 team owners would have to vote to remove Snyder, a step that has never been taken in the N.F.L.’s more than 100-year history.
Two weeks ago, Daniel and Tanya Snyder announced that they had hired bankers to explore all options for selling some or all of the team.
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