Judge ends Peter Nowak's lawsuit against Union

Updated on January 13: For much of the duration of Peter Nowak's lawsuit, he was out of the public spotlight. By coincidence (or so it seems), Nowak got a new job just a few days after proceedings ended. He has been hired by Lechia Gdansk, a club in the middle of the top division in Nowak's native Poland.

"They have fulfilled my dream," Nowak told reporters in Poland (translated via Google from original stories here and here). "I am happy that after 26 years, I am back in Poland."

When the club was asked about Nowak's transgressions in Philadelphia, a spokesperson said (again translated via Google): "These are private matters [which] happened in the past and have no connection with Lechia."

The federal judge hearing Peter Nowak's wrongful termination lawsuit against the Philadelphia Union has upheld the arbitrator's ruling against Nowak and in the Union's favor.

Nowak had appealed the arbitrator's ruling to the judge, Mark Kearney of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Nowak claimed that the arbitrator was biased and made factual judgments off what Nowak and his attorneys claimed was hearsay evidence in testimony by witnesses.

The legal bar for convincing a judge to overturn arbitration decisions is very high, as courts have long been generally deferential to arbitrators' rulings.

Kearney reviewed arbitrator Margaret Brogan's ruling, as well as the hundreds of pages of evidence that have become public during the three and a half years of legal proceedings. Ultimately, he was not swayed by Nowak's pleas, and ruled in the team's favor.

"Nowak signed an agreement to arbitrate and unless he meets certain limited grounds, we defer to the selected arbitrator's findings after evaluating exhibits and witnesses," Kearney wrote. "He has not established any ground justifying vacatur [an overruling of the arbitrator]… The April 21, 2015 Interim and November 5, 2015 Final Arbitration Awards in favor of Pennsylvania Professional Soccer LLC and Keystone Sports and Entertainment LLC's are confirmed. Piotr Nowak's claims are denied."

With that, Kearney ordered the case closed.

You can read the full ruling here.

Theoretically, Nowak can appeal to a higher level of the federal court system, but the odds of him winning are even longer than they already were.

So it seems safe to say that at long last, the Union have officially put this sordid chapter of their history behind them.