U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez ruled on Thursday that the testimony of two expert witnesses, who had presented analyses in favor of the plaintiffs, employed flawed methodologies that should have been excluded from trial.
A federal judge has overturned a jury’s multibillion-dollar verdict in a class-action lawsuit filed by “Sunday Ticket” subscribers against the NFL.
According to The Associated Press, U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez ruled on Thursday that the testimony of two expert witnesses, who had presented analyses in favor of the plaintiffs, employed flawed methodologies that should have been excluded from trial.
“Without the testimonies of Dr. [Daniel] Rascher and Dr. [John] Zona, no reasonable jury could have found class-wide injuries or damages,” Gutierrez wrote in his 16-page ruling.
Earlier this summer, jurors found that the NFL had most likely violated antitrust laws by colluding with telecommunications companies to inflate the price of its “Sunday Ticket” subscription package. The jury awarded roughly $4.7 billion in damages to the class, which encompassed more than 2.4 million consumers and around 48,000 commercial businesses.
However, Gutierrez said that attorneys for the plaintiffs “failed to provide evidence from which a reasonable jury could make a finding of injury and an award of actual damages that would not be erroneous as a matter of law, be totally unfounded and/or be purely speculative.”
Dr. Rascher, the judge wrote, had used college football as a point of reference for how entities like the NFL could air out-of-market games without forcing consumers to pay high prices for the privilege of watching their favorite teams play from another state or city.
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“These are sophisticated entities involved in this,” Rascher said of the NFL and its partners, “and they figured out in college sports, they would certainly figure out at the NFL.”
But Gutierrez’s order states that Rascher’s “assumption is not a reliable methodology,” in that it fails to explain how the NFL could have—or should have—aired out-of-market games for free or at a drastically reduced price.
“Dr. Rascher’s failure to produce a coherent model is particularly problematic as there are significant differences between college football and the outcome in his college football but-for world,” Gutierrez wrote, observing that many college football games are neither available to out-of-market consumers nor viewable without purchase of a premium subscription service.
Zona’s testimony, in contrast, was criticized on several grounds.
Guterriez noted that the Zona’s model had, for instance, proposed that consumers would have been willing to pay more money for the “Sunday Ticket” if it had been distributed through a provider other than DirecTV. Zona also purportedly failed to provide a coherent definition of what an alternative “direct-to-consumer” product would be.
Pending appeal or further motions, Gutierrez’s order represents a significant victory for the NFL: it finds that the jury’s reasoning was compromised by the flawed testimonies of Drs. Rascher and Zona, and vacates the $4.7 billion award in its entirety.
“We are grateful for today’s ruling in the Sunday Ticket class action lawsuit,” an NFL spokesperson said in a statement. “We believe that the NFL’s media distribution model provides our fans with an array of options to follow the game they love, including local broadcasts of every single game on free over-the-air television.”
Sources
Federal judge overturns $4.7 billion jury verdict in ‘Sunday Ticket’ lawsuit and rules for NFL
Judge Tosses Out $4.7 Billion Jury Verdict Against NFL In Class Action Lawsuit
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