Remember when Dana White testified that he has nothing to do with matchmaking? The texts and other messages from the UFC were to be sent to plaintiffs in the ongoing lawsuit in the Kajan Johnson antitrust case. However, they were not sent on time argues the plaintiffs.
According to plaintiffs, Zuffa did not have the correct date to produce documents. It was only after a filing for Motion to Compel (i.e., Motion for an order to show cause…) did Zuffa provide docuements.
Plaintiffs had filed a Motion to Compel the Production of Documents but withdrew it after documents were produced. The emails between the attorneys reflect the disagreement as to when production of documents were due.
Below is attorney for Zuffa, Joseph Axelrad sending plaintiffs’ attorneys an email on Saturday night stating that production of documents would not get to plaintiffs until March 23rd.
In this follow-up email plaintiffs’ attorney responds to Zuffa’s attorney and points out that the above email would not be needed if they believe that the production would be due on Monday, March 23rd.
Zuffa has not responded to this latest legal pleadings. According to the filing by plaintiffs, they will be filing a motion citing non-compliance with the Court Order as well as requesting attorney fees for having to bring a motion to the court.
Notably, in most discovery cases, if a due date falls on a weekend day, the party has until the next court day to file a response and it would still be in compliance. Hence, here it would seem that if the due date was a Saturday, they would have until Monday to respond.
However, this might not be the case here as a Saturday night email from Zuffa’s attorney may suggest (as plaintiffs’ argue) that they knew that a hard deadline occurred on Saturday night.
Regardless, plaintiffs have withdrawn its Motion to Compel but they argue that they have not had a chance to determine the completeness of the discovery responses. Plaintiffs want to make sure that the document production complies with the Court Order and if not, they may take it to the Court.
MPO will continue to follow.
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