WARWICK, R.I. -- A former Providence police officer is suing the New England Patriots after the team revoked his season tickets when his wife tried to auction their seats on eBay.

John Reis, 47, is an 18-year season ticket holder with three seats in the 34th row of Gillette Stadium at the 50-yard line.

Now he finds himself involved in two separate court actions with the team. He's suing the Patriots in federal court for the return of his tickets and damages, and has filed a criminal assault and battery complaint against Patriots security chief Mark Briggs.

''I was never late with a payment. The price went up more than 100 percent, and I didn't blink an eyelash,'' Reis told The Boston Globe.

Team spokesman Stacey James declined to comment on the lawsuit. Briggs' attorney, Daniel Goldberg, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Reis and his wife, Lisa, planned a vacation for their anniversary that would cause him to miss the Patriots' Oct. 13 home game against the Green Bay Packers.

At her brother's suggestion, Lisa Reis put the tickets up for sale on the online auction site eBay. When the bidding ended in early June, the high bid was $851, more than three times the face value for the three tickets.

The transaction was never completed, however, and the Reises never collected the money, according to their attorney, Sean McAteer.

Two days after the auction, Reis got a letter from Briggs and the Patriots saying that his season ticket privileges had been revoked because he'd violated a team policy banning the resale of tickets to a third party.

Reis says he called and wrote to Briggs, but the security director refused to back down. One secretary told Reis that he could go to the bottom of a waiting list -- behind 50,000 others.

Finally, Reis and McAteer were able to schedule a meeting with Briggs at the team's corporate offices in Foxboro, Mass.

Reis and McAteer say Briggs flew into a rage when he saw that Reis was accompanied by an attorney. He allegedly ripped Reis' shirt while tearing off his visitor badge and ordered the pair escorted from the building.

On the way home from that meeting, Reis, a former Providence police lieutenant who now works for the Rhode Island attorney general's office, blacked out and crashed his car on a Rte. 95 off-ramp. He spent two days in the hospital, where doctors diagnosed the blackout as a fainting spell induced by extreme stress.

On Tuesday, a clerk magistrate in Wrentham District Court found probable cause to proceed with the criminal assault complaint against Briggs.

At a hearing scheduled for next week in U.S. District Court, McAteer will ask a judge for a temporary injunction that would return Reis' seats to him in time for the Patriots' regular-season opener against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sept. 9.

''There is nothing in the team rules that says anything about the attempted selling of tickets,'' McAteer said. ''There was no sale here.''