The Federal Magistrate has ruled on Bellator’s Motion to Quash the Subpoena and its Motion to Modify the UFC’s Subpoena. According to a Proposed Order drafted by Zuffa, the Court has denied Bellator’s Motion to Quash and granted its Motion to Modify.
Although the Court has not yet signed the Order, barring an objection or request for an Amendment from the Plaintiffs and/or Bellator’s counsel as to the form of the order, it is likely that this is the Order that will be entered. One would think that the parties would have hashed the language out prior to filing with the Court.
As you might recall, Bellator filed its motion in Los Angeles Federal Court but the magistrate granted transfer to the court in Nevada. On June 1, the Court heard oral arguments and issued a minute order.
Outlined in Bellator’s Motion to Quash, 5 document demands which Bellator summarized below:
- Bellator’s confidential contracts and negotiation with MMA athletes (Plaintiffs’ Demand No. 4; UFC Demand No. 1); and
- Bellator’s detailed revenues and expenses from operations (Plaintiffs’ Demand No. 12: UFC Demand Nos. 7 and 12).
Zuffa had “requested unredacted contracts and documents regarding its negotiations with athletes, and limited financial information including profit/loss statements and financial projections.” Bellator claimed that it is “confidential commercial information, that the documents are irrelevant to the claims and defenses at issue in the Nevada Action, that producing the information would be an undue burden, and that Bellator may suffer competitive harm from disclosing the information.”
The Proposed Order would require for Bellator to provide the following:
- “[a]ll agreements between Bellator and its athletes for a randomized sample of athletes” with the names and other identifiers (i.e., addresses, social security numbers, etc.) redacted.
- A database of these [in No. 1] athletes with information identifying: athlete gender and weight class by year/the number of bouts completed/any discretionary or “locker room” bonuses paid any athlete as well as any signing bonuses.
- Quarterly profit/loss statements covering the period from January 1, 2009 to present;
- Event-level profit/loss statements for all events from January 1, 2009 to present for each event which Bellator contends UFC adversely impacted its events.
Bellator will have to give up documents but the original request was modified by the Court. These documents will be provided to the parties by June 23, 2017.
Proposed Order Re Bellator by JASONCRUZ206 on Scribd
Payout Perspective:
Obviously, a loss for Bellator as it will have to produce documents despite being a nonparty. However, it could have been worse. Number 4 on the Proposed Order puts some pressure on Bellator as it is essentially calling for Bellator to make a decision on which events were impacted by the UFC. Of course, the decision on what to produce and what not to produce might impact the litigation since its the UFC’s argument that Bellator is a competitor. In the end, Bellator is a nonparty that is now needing to incur legal expense to produce documents as well as evaluate the documents they are producing considering that the information is highly sensitive. Moreover, the need to redacting documents is not a quick process despite the online tools to streamline the process.
MMA Payout will keep you posted.
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