Combat Sports Law

In my ongoing efforts to highlight legal action taken against those  accused of unlawful use of MMA Pay Per View products, reasons for judgement were released last week by the United States District Court, E.D. California, addressing an application for enforcement of a default judgement.

In last week’s case (Joe Hand Promotions v. Sorondo) the Plaintiff had the exclusive commercial exhibition licensing rights to World Extreme Cagefighting: Jose Aldo v. Urijah Faber.  They sued the Defendant, a pub in California, for  unlawfully intercepting, receiving, and exhibiting the Program.  The Defendant failed to respond to the lawsuit and default judgement for $12,900 was granted.

Some 3 years later, the Plaintiff was attempting to execute the judgement against the Defendants property.  Although the Plaintiff’s application was dismissed for technical reasons, it was done so without prejudice meaning the Plaintiff could bring a further application correcting the deficient evidence and get on with collections procedures.

There are at least three lessons to gain from this decision, the first is that Joe Hand Promotions will go after assets to satisfy their legal judgement, the second is that the passage of time is no assurance of safety as today’s case demonstrates on going collections efforts years after the fact.  Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, this case demonstrates that failing to respond to a lawsuit is not a good strategy as it resulted in a hefty default judgement which perhaps could have been contested on the merits.