Christina Scavo and Shannon O’Toole filed a Complaint against Brett Favre, the New York Jets, and Lisa Ripi with the New York County Clerk’s Office on January 3, 2011. Two out of the three Defendants should be easily recognizable. The third, Lisa Ripi, is the New York Jets’ massage therapist coordinator. Part of her duties included […]
Category: Sports Law
In May 2010, my article, The Plight of PASPA: It’s Time to Pull the Plug on the Prohibition was published in the Gaming Law Review and Economics. The article focuses on the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), which has completely denied forty-six states from adopting any type of state-sponsored sports betting scheme. The Act, which […]
Roughly 9,000 lawsuits have been filed against tobacco companies in Florida based on claims that for many years tobacco companies failed to warn smokers about the dangers and addictive capacity of cigarettes. The class of potential plaintiffs is huge, as many people across the country have smoked cigarettes at one point in their lives. The […]
On November 29, I discussed Anheuser-Busch Inc.’s lawsuit against MLB. In its Complaint, Anheuser-Busch claimed that the company was entitled to a multi-year renewal on its beer-sponsorship rights based on negotiations that ended with a letter agreement in April 2010, and that MLB all of a sudden went back on its promise to renew, asking for […]
Trademark bullying watch! My first post on trademark bullying discussed the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) interest in eliciting suggestions to address these problematic litigation tactics. Legit claims are one thing; trademark bullying ties up the courts, costs people money that would be better spent on innovation, and takes up unnecessary time litigating. My […]
Here is a sample definition of likeness – name, silhouette, personality, appearance, performance, depiction, portrayal, photograph and voice. It is an integral definition in many licensing agreements where one party hopes to be able to exploit the other party, usually for a hefty fee. What if you were not entitled to just compensation for the […]
Major League Baseball has a battle on its hands. One of its main sponsors, Anheuser-Busch Inc., has filed a lawsuit against MLB, claiming that the company was entitled to a multi-year renewal on its beer-sponsorship rights based on negotiations that ended with a letter agreement in April 2010, and that MLB all of a sudden […]
Very talented athletes stand to make more money from off field/court/ice/etc. activities than what they earn based on performing in the trade that they are truly qualified. Agents, attorneys, and marketers attempt to find and negotiate these deals for their athlete clients. Often times, those deals are licensing agreements, or at least contain provisions that […]
When a trading card company uses a professional athlete’s picture on one of its cards, it needs to first have permission from the athlete before printing the cards and selling them to the public for profit. Karim Abdul-Jabbar is ready to put up a fight against the Upper Deck Inc. after the company released cards […]
Tom Condon, who is an agent in the football division at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), has filed a lawsuit in federal court against former client, Ryan Pickett. Condon claims that Pickett owes the agent $83,600 in unpaid agent fees, and wants the court to confirm and enforce an arbitrator’s order stating such is true. The […]