Man City's 35 counts, and why the cover-up is always worse than the crime

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There are 35 things your workplace does not want to have in common with the Premier League's investigation of Manchester City.

That's how many of the 115 Premier League charges against Man City have nothing to do with the club's finances. They're for failing to cooperate with the league's investigation.

According to multiple reports, an independent commission has found City guilty of 114 of those 115 charges. Eighty involve breaches of financial rules from 2009 to 2018. The other 35 cover how City behaved once the league started asking questions. Sanctions haven't been set, and City is expected to appeal. But points deductions, even expulsion, are both on the table and deserved.

Nearly a third of the case isn't about what City did. It's about how City responded.

Employers make the same mistake all the time. And the Supreme Court has already told juries what to do about it. In Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing, the Court held that a jury can infer from a false explanation "that the employer is dissembling to cover up a discriminatory purpose." Lie about why you fired someone, and the lie becomes evidence of the very thing you're denying.

Juries take it from there.

For example, Luri v. Republic Services. Ron Luri refused to fire three employees because of their age. Republic fired him instead. His supervisors then fabricated evidence and backdated documents to build a sham paper trail justifying the termination. A Cleveland jury awarded $46.6 million, $43.1 million of it punitive, the largest retaliatory discharge verdict in Ohio history. Ohio's tort-reform cap later cut the punitives to $7 million. Still.

Or Zubulake v. UBS Warburg. UBS failed to preserve emails in a sex discrimination case, even after its own lawyers warned it to. The jury got an adverse inference instruction and returned $29.3 million, more than $20 million of it punitive. According to Zubulake, jurors were already convinced of the discrimination. The punitive number was about the emails.

And Boyle v. Wayfair. In April, a Boston jury rejected Mary Boyle's age discrimination claim. But it heard evidence that after she complained, management solicited negative feedback from her subordinates. Eight days after she returned from medical leave, she was on a PIP. The jury found retaliation and awarded $4.75 million, $4 million of it punitive.

In each case, what the employer did after the complaint cost more than the complaint itself.

City will fight the 80 on the merits. The 35, however, were self-inflicted. Don't hand a jury your own 35.