Cards
Fanatics scores big win as collector’s antitrust lawsuit dismissed for good
A case in which a card collector filed a class-action lawsuit claiming antitrust violations against manufacturing giant Fanatics, a number of major professional sports leagues and their players’ associations has been dismissed for good.
In March of this year, Fanatics brought a motion to dismiss the suit filed by collector Robert Scaturo. The judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York granted the dismissal, but provided the plaintiffs’ attorneys one more opportunity to prove that Fanatics and the sports leagues and associations created a monopoly and inflated prices on items sold to consumers.
“The judge said, you can come back and if you can fix it, you can fix it. If not, I’m going to dismiss the case with prejudice,” Paul Lesko of St. Louis-based Lesko Law LLC told SCD. “The plaintiffs came back and said, ‘Well, you know, we really can’t fix. We need more discovery.’ The judge says, ‘That’s not going to happen. I’m not going to condone a fishing expedition to fix your complaint.’”
Last week, the plaintiffs moved to dismiss the case with prejudice, meaning the case can’t be brought up again. The judge granted the motion.
“We said from the start that this was a baseless and fundamentally flawed copycat lawsuit, since Fanatics was being accused of raising prices on cards we didn’t even produce,” a Fanatics spokesperson said in a statement. “The Court agreed and ruled that this case was legally deficient. We are happy that the case has now been fully dismissed with prejudice.”
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Last year, five plaintiffs filed a lawsuit alleging harm from increased prices of NBA and NFL cards that Fanatics hadn’t even sold yet. Plaintiffs Robert Scaturo, Scott Bubnick, Joseph Davidov, Steven Mardakhaev and Jonathan Madar brought an eight-count putative class-action complaint against Fanatics, Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NBA and all of the leagues’ players associations.
The Scaturo v. Fanatics case thus sets a precedent for future rulings in similar lawsuits.
“This case and the court’s order just really emphasizes the fact that if you don’t have the information that you need, and the information that the plaintiffs there needed to show was there are pricing differences. That because of antitrust, consumers are spending more, things along those lines,” said Lesko, who is known on social media as the “hobby lawyer.” “The plaintiffs couldn’t show that. They didn’t have evidence to show it, so the case was done.
“What that says to me is that pretty much any lawsuit probably based off of a consumer trying to sue for antitrust in these issues, it’s just not going to go anywhere.”
In a somewhat related case, the Panini v. Fanatics antitrust lawsuit is still plugging along. It is in the process of wrapping up discovery, noted Lesko. If the judge moves the case forward, a trial won’t be scheduled until 2027 at the earliest.
Lesko calls Fanatics’ win in the Scaturo case big for the company.
“It can’t make Panini happy, because the same judge that was overseeing the Scaturo case is overseeing the Panini v. Fanatics antitrust case,” Lesko said. “Again, there’s different issues. But it does show that this judge is very familiar with the issues. As of now, she doesn’t think that consumers can properly plead their claim.
“So, if you’re Panini’s attorneys, you’re all true believers in your case, but that’s not a good thing. That’s not something you want to see. What you always want to see is all the antitrust cases go forward at the same time. But Panini’s kind of on their own with this case now.”
