Last week, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Judge Jeffrey Schmehl, granted the Motions to Dismiss of Sands Bethlehem Casino Resort and other Pennsylvania casinos, which were alleged to have engaged in a retaliatory boycott impacting a mixed martial arts (MMA) promoter\u2019s events. Sands Bethlehem was alleged to have engaged in a boycott of plaintiff\u2019s events as a retaliation for a prior lawsuit promoter Ryan Kerwin filed against Valley Forge Casino and Harrah\u2019s in Chester, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
Sands, Parx and Sugarhouse Casinos and their respective event directors faced allegations that certain emails cited in the Complaint established a conspiracy. The plaintiff alleged that the defendants\u2019 \u201chorizontal group boycott\u201d would put the plaintiff promoter out-of-business. The Court found the emails, at best, demonstrated nothing more than unilateral action by the individual casinos. There was no \u201cplus factor\u201d in the complaint\u2019s allegation that would have shown a motive, actions that were against the individual casinos\u2019 economic interests or, evidence that implied a traditional conspiracy. In the Sands instance, it was alleged that Sands actually emailed with plaintiff offering to contract for MMA events but plaintiff would not agree to Sands\u2019 \u201cinflated terms\u201d.<\/p>\n
Judge Schmehl found that nowhere in the Amended Complaint did there appear evidence of \u201ca conspiracy that supports an inference of collusion.\u201d The Court\u2019s holding that plaintiff failed to plead an unlawful agreement precluded an analysis of the other elements of the Section I Sherman Act claim.<\/p>\n
The Court also dismissed claims that the defendant casinos (and Harrah\u2019s and Valley Forge) were collective monopolists by keeping essential facilities from the MMA promoter. The plaintiff\u2019s own pleadings that MMA events were staged elsewhere in Pennsylvania, other than the casinos\u2019 event centers, convinced the Court that defendants\u2019 properties were not \u201cessential facilities\u201d.<\/p>\n
Sands was represented by Duane Morris lawyers \u2013 Manly Parks and Sarah O\u2019Laughlin Kulik.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Judge Jeffrey Schmehl, granted the Motions to Dismiss of Sands Bethlehem Casino Resort and other Pennsylvania casinos, which were alleged to have engaged in a retaliatory boycott impacting a mixed martial arts (MMA) promoter\u2019s events. Sands Bethlehem was alleged to have engaged … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “\u201cNo Collusion.\u201d Sands Bethlehem KOs MMA Promoter’s Antitrust Claim”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[65,34,229,231,54,23,230],"ppma_author":[270],"class_list":["post-348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-casino","tag-gaming","tag-gaming-litigation","tag-general","tag-j-scott-kramer","tag-pennsylvania-gaming","tag-sands"],"authors":[{"term_id":270,"user_id":73,"is_guest":0,"slug":"jskramer","display_name":"J. Scott Kramer","avatar_url":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/gaminglaw\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2014\/08\/kramerscott-125x150.jpg","author_category":"","last_name":"Kramer","first_name":"J. Scott","job_title":"","user_url":"http:\/\/www.duanemorris.com\/attorneys\/jscottkramer.html","description":"Read Scott's bio.<\/a>"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/gaminglaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/gaminglaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/gaminglaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/gaminglaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/gaminglaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/gaminglaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/gaminglaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/gaminglaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/gaminglaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/gaminglaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}