Source: Tom Brady will attend Aug. 12 Deflategate settlement hearing

— -- New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady will appear in person for a court-mandated Deflategate settlement hearing Aug. 12 in New York City, a source confirmed to ESPN on Monday.

U.S. District Judge Richard Berman last week ordered that Brady and commissioner Roger Goodell both appear at the hearing as he continues to encourage the sides to reach a settlement in the matter of Brady's four-game suspension for his alleged involvement in deflating footballs for the AFC Championship Game in January. There had been some reports Monday that Brady might try to attend the hearing by phone, but the source insisted that the plan was always for Brady to appear in person, as the judge ordered.

The next step in the Deflategate case should come Monday night or Tuesday, when the judge rules on the matter of whether the parties may submit court documents under seal or whether those documents might be made public. The documents include the transcript of Brady's June appeal hearing with Goodell. If they're made public, they would reveal the full extent of the conversation involving the cellphone the league claims Brady destroyed after league investigators asked him for it. A source also said the union, in its arguments that day, used excerpts from the arguments it made in earlier cases involving Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson. The documents in those cases were sealed.

Goodell and the NFLPA will be spending a fair amount of time together next week. The settlement hearing for the contempt of court motion the NFLPA filed against Goodell in May for taking too long to rule on Peterson's appeal will be heard Aug. 13, the day after the Brady settlement hearing. Aug. 12 is the day before the Patriots' preseason opener vs. the Packers. 

Related Stories

Man kills wife, 3 kids in mass shooting: Police

• Apr 23, 12:35 PM

Trump, NY AG resolve dispute over $175M bond

• Apr 22, 12:14 PM

OJ Simpson dies at 76

• Apr 11, 6:32 PM

Goodell upheld Brady's suspension last Tuesday after Brady appealed. The three-time Super Bowl MVP then filed his counterclaim in federal court in New York last Friday, seeking to vacate his four-game suspension.

Brady's lawyers argued in a 54-page filing that the league's decision "violates fundamental arbitral principles concerning fairness and arbitrator bias."

Brady also argued his punishment violates the "law of shop," because he never was made aware of the disciplinary policies that would be applied to him.