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Maryland vs ACC lawsuit able to proceed

JDawg said:
Chad Steele, a Ravens spokesman, denied earlier reports that Sanders was working as Bisciotti's bodyguard.

Yeah, okay. Like I believe that one. An off-duty city cop just buddy-buddy with a billionaire.

I have a feeling he quickly got a new bodyguard.
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Nope, he is now head of security for the Ravens. It was actually Bisciotti who "shot" him. Bisciotti grabbed the gun when it was falling, and it went off.
 
KitchinDeac said:
Clark Smith and Alex Maultsby are still at Smith Moore. Alan Duncan is the only one who left.
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Gotcha, I haven't been following that closely and thought Duncan was lead counsel and had just assumed that the ACC went with him. Thanks for the clarification.
 
DeaconSig said:
NC law does not allow liquidated damages to be a penalty. LDs have to be related in some way to actual damages that might be sustained. That doesn't mean that the fact Louisville was added and the TV money increased is outcome determinative. You have to look to the time when the K was entered.

ACC has a decent or better shot.
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I hope you're right because I would love to see Maryland's nose rubbed in it. I think the ACC could also argue that the $50 million exit fee was protection against the league's complete dissolution (and economic losses much higher than $50 million) from members leaving, and Maryland's leaving in fact did threaten the league's very existence and still does if the full exit fee is not enforced. Louisville's recruitment does not change that existential threat.
 
Yeah I had guessed 25-30 million (or whatever the total amount currently withheld was).

Biggest payment for a school leaving a conference yet. Those amounts will only increase.
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
Yeah I had guessed 25-30 million (or whatever the total amount currently withheld was).

Biggest payment for a school leaving a conference yet. Those amounts will only increase.
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Now that TV rights are thrown in, the amounts could be staggering.
 
Does anyone know if the $31 mil that was withheld from Md has already been distributed, or is this now coming to member schools?
 
not sure but i assume louisville and syracuse dont get any of it right?
 
I think the money was being held in escrow but I'm not sure.

This benefits the acc because they can keep the same language in the liquidated damages clause and they have the grant of rights. Acc will retain their current members for a while.
 
Yep- the ACC realignment should be all but done short of adding ND as a full time member.
 
Shorty said:
If ND ever becomes full time (don't hold your breath), I'd think the conference would look to add another to have 16 full time members. Not sure who that would be, though. UConn?
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BC had thier balls busted by UCONN when they left the Big East. They have a long memory. Cincinnati is more likely. Ohio has a more fertial recruiting ground.
 
From an academic standpoint (which clearly no longer matters), Cincinnati makes Louisville look like Harvard.
 
DeaconSig said:
NC law does not allow liquidated damages to be a penalty. LDs have to be related in some way to actual damages that might be sustained. That doesn't mean that the fact Louisville was added and the TV money increased is outcome determinative. You have to look to the time when the K was entered.

ACC has a decent or better shot.
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Yeah, also under most state law I believe that even if the liquidated damages provision is found to be unenforceable the party who was the victim of the breach is still entitled to common law damages. Similarly, under the Restatement courts are more likely to find an agreed upon liquidated damages clause enforceable if it is negotiated by sophisticated parties (clearly the case here), there is no superior bargaining power (again, pretty clear here), and if the actual damages are difficult to pinpoint (absolutely the case when trying to figure out how much one specific team leaving the conference would impact the bottom line of the conference) so long as the amount isn't "unreasonably large" (whatever that means - but definitely the tough question a court would have had to grapple with here).

I don't think that mitigation of damages comes into play with these damages clauses unless they are found to be unenforceable since the LDs are meant to be a substitution for damages so that the parties don't have to go through the increased transaction costs of determining actual damages which can be almost impossible to find. If you had to mitigate damages still under an LDs, what was the point of having the clause in the first place? That's my thought process at least - I don't know what the majority rule is on that though.

Obviously I would think if they are held to be unenforceable mitigation would come in when figuring out how much the ACC was actually harmed since Louisville joined shortly after but I think the ACC would just say "we were going to add Louisville no matter what in an attempt to get to 15 or 16 teams and it wasn't intended to replace Maryland at all."

I think it's all pretty interesting (I mean, legally interesting at least) and to be honest it's difficult to imagine a situation at present where a case actually lasts long enough to determine if the LD clause in a conference charter is actually valid. The presence of the LD clause just incentivizes private negotiations and settlement. Teams generally wouldn't leave a conference unless it was an efficient breach and I would have to think that part of that determination is weighing what the odds are of actually having to pay the full amount of the LD clause. In other words if Maryland didn't think they would make more money in the long term by moving to the Big Ten, even if they had to pay the whole $53 million, they wouldn't have moved before getting some sense of what their liability was. Who knows if they're rational though.
 
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2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
From an academic standpoint (which clearly no longer matters), Cincinnati makes Louisville look like Harvard.
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Cincinnati's administration has been lobbying very hard behind the scenes to get into the ACC. They're about to embark on a major overhaul of revenue sports facilities.
 
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