Thanks to Skip Oliva, a long-time Off Wing reader and anti-trust expert, I've now got a copy of Madison Square Garden's anti-trust suit against the NHL that the team filed when it refused to hand over control of its Web properties to the league.
Besides giving me a copy of the complaint, Skip also gave me a preliminary take on the suit, the chance that the Rangers might prevail and what the long-term affect may be on anti-trust law:
This is a serious antitrust suit. Jones Day (MSG's law firm) is a heavy hitter in this field, and if this survives the pleadings stage, the Garden stands a good chance of prevailing.Now for my libertarian take on this. As you know, I've often railed against the consolidation of power by league commissioners. If even half of what the Garden alleges in this complaint is true, then Bettman is the worst kind of bureaucratic manager and he out to be catapulted out of town. But what bothers me is the Garden has made a pure antitrust argument (under federal and state law.) There's no allegation that Bettman or the other clubs violated the NHL's governing documents or otherwise committed breach of contract. So that means MSG voluntarily agreed to abide by certain rules, but when they didn't like the outcome, they went to court claiming a public policy exception. It's hard for me to get on board with that.
I'll write more about this tonight on my blog and next week when I relaunch the Voluntary Trade website. This is a potential landmark case.
Very interesting. In the meantime, I'm going to get to work reading the complaint. Thanks to Skip for providing some especially keen insight.
UPDATE: Click here (PDF) for a copy of the complaint.
