On Wednesday, the PGA Tour went on offense in its antitrust battle with LIV Golf, while Patrick Reed filed another $750 million defamation lawsuit over what he says is illegal badmouthing regarding his decision to join LIV.
The PGA Tour filed its answer to the complaint for what is now called Matt Jones, Bryson DeChambeau and Peter Uihlein and LIV Golf v. PGA Tour. The renamed case reflects Phil Mickelson and three over LIV golfers withdrawing from the litigation on Tuesday.
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The PGA Tour, which has denied any wrongdoing, offers 18 defenses. In one defense, the PGA Tour insists LIV and its golfers haven’t suffered an economic injury. Last month, Judge Beth Labson Freeman found it problematic for LIV golfers to laud LIV as offering them superior career options while simultaneously saying the PGA Tour causes them harm. Another defense is that the PGA Tour, which now competes with LIV, possesses “no probability of achieving monopoly power in the relevant market.” The PGA Tour also argues the golfers contractually agreed to follow the rules they now maintain are illegal and that some of the claims are time barred under applicable statutes of limitations.
As Sportico anticipated, the PGA Tour also maintains LIV engaged in tortious interference. LIV, the PGA Tour asserts in a counterclaim, induced golfers to break their contracts through “a campaign to pay the LIV Players astronomical sums of money.” LIV is portrayed as sparing no expense in a so-called effort to “sportswash the recent history of Saudi atrocities.”
LIV is also accused of “falsely communicating” to golfers that they had the legal right to exit PGA Tour contracts while “in the same breath . . . LIV has entered into its own agreements with the LIV Players, which impose contractual restrictions on the LIV Players more onerous in scope and duration than any of the Tour regulations they challenge.”
In response, expect LIV to maintain that the golfers made…
Source : yahoo
