Combat Sports Law

Today reasons dismissing Mark Hunt’s doping lawsuit against the UFC, Dana White and Brock Lesnar were published (HT MMAJunkie).

The suit stemmed from Hunt’s bout against Lesnar in 2016 at UFC 200. Lesnar tested positive for a banned substance which led Hunt to sue the various parties. The lawsuit was dismissed previously but on appeal his claims for fraud, battery and conspiracy were revived. These went back to the district judge who granted summary judgement in favour of the Defendants.

The battery claim seemed to gain the most traction. In short Hunt argued that Lesnar’s doping was fraudulent cheating and that doping took away his consent to face Lesnar. In dismissing this aspect of Hunt’s claim District Judge Jennifer Dorsey provied the following reasons:

Apparently recognizing the evidentiary infirmity of this supercharged-fighter theory,
Hunt shifted away from it by the time of oral argument. Hunt’s counsel acknowledged that he
wasn’t focused on whether Lesnar was “supercharged” or “super human” when he fought Hunt.
The issue, according to Hunt’s counsel, was solely that Lesnar was caught “cheating.” So he
rested the battery claim instead on the theory that Hunt couldn’t have consented “to go into a
combat sport or any other sport with a cheater.”

But a violation of the rules of the game won’t vitiate consent to battery unless that
violation caused a meaningful change in the physical contact that’s expected. The Supreme
Court of Virginia’s opinion in Koffman v. Garrett is illustrative of this principle. A middleschool football player sued his coach for battery after the coach slammed him to the ground to
demonstrate “the proper tackling technique to the defensive players.”

The force of the tackle broke the student’s arm. The coach argued that the player consented to be tackled when he joined the football team. The player responded that, while he consented to physical contact with
other students, he did not consent to being tackled by an adult coach with obvious differences in
strength than the average middle-school football player. The court agreed at the motion-to-dismiss stage, finding that “reasonable persons could disagree on whether [the student] gave such
consent.”

The Nevada Court of Appeals’ unpublished opinion in Kuchta v. Sheltie Opco, LLC
similarly reflects that, under Nevada battery law, consent can be deemed withdrawn if an
offensive contact is not substantially the same as what was expected. The Court held that a
plaintiff could maintain a battery claim against a nightclub that promised a mild ride on a
mechanical bull but instead intentionally and “significantly increased the speed and violence of
the bull’s movements,” causing the plaintiff to be thrown from the bull and suffer injuries.
The defendant maintained that the plaintiff consented to the ride by signing a release-of-liability
form. The Court rejected that argument at the motion-to-dismiss stage and held that the
plaintiff only consented to a mild ride, so “if the ride went beyond a mild ride, then there is a
material question of fact as to the nature of the ride and to whether [the plaintiff] consented to the
resulting physical contact as the result of the unexpectedly rough ride.”

In this case, however, there was no unexpectedly rough ride or tackling by an opponent
of disproportionate size and strength. Hunt fought a man in his weight class and proclaimed that
he believed it was an even fight. He expected a fight typical of the mixed-martial arts, one with
kicking, punching, and other tactics endorsed by the sport. As he readily acknowledged after the

fight, that’s precisely what he received. Because the record establishes without genuine
dispute of material fact that Hunt consented to the same or substantially the same contact, degree
of force, and consequences that he experienced, I find that his consent to the fight precludes him
from establishing his battery claim against Lesnar. Thus, Lesnar is entitled to summary
judgment in his favor on Hunt’s battery claim against him.

The UFC previously sought to recover legal fees from Hunt under a clause in his contract with the promotion that has potentially crushing consequences to a fighter who unsuccessfully sues the promotion. In 2021 these were assessed at over $388,000. Presumably the number will be much higher now.

It is not yet known if Hunt plans further appeal.