AAI has filed an amicus brief in the Ninth Circuit in Ninth Inning, Inc. v. NFL (In re NFL Sunday Ticket Antitrust Litigation), Nos. 24-5493 & 24-5691, asking it to reverse the district court’s alternative judgment vacating the jury’s $4.7 billion verdict. The district court’s judgment as a matter of law overturned a jury verdict against NFL teams for an illegal agreement to make out-of-market games available to live broadcast viewers only through Sunday Ticket, a bundled premium-price package on DirecTV.
AAI’s brief argues that the district court’s second-guessing of the jury verdict is not consistent with Supreme Court or Ninth Circuit precedent because it failed to assess the damages award by the correct standard: “just and reasonable” given the “totality of the circumstances.” Instead, the district court accepted defendants’ post-trial reverse engineering of the verdict and engaged in a piece-by-piece analysis of the hypothetical inputs into the damages calculations. It used that analysis to determine that the verdict was not supported by the evidence even though the aggregate amount of damages was significantly lower than models presented by the plaintiffs and admitted at trial.
AAI’s brief argues that the district court’s approach is overly stringent and allows defendants to profit from the uncertainty their illegal conduct created. Such a searching analysis of the jury’s damage award also impinges on the constitutional right to trial by jury that is guaranteed for private antitrust damages actions.
AAI’s brief explains that the right to a jury trial and respect for the integrity of the jury award are particularly important in private antitrust damages actions for at least two reasons. First, the jury trial is a key way in which antitrust law is held to its original democratic goals. Second, the jury damages award is a vital element of antitrust enforcement’s deterrence goals. To allow defendants found to have engaged in illegal conduct to escape unpunished is not just fundamentally unfair, it compromises the ability of antitrust enforcers to dissuade others tempted to engage in illegal but profitable conduct.
The brief was written by AAI Vice President & Director of Legal Advocacy Kathleen Bradish.
Read the full brief here: AAI Amicus Brief in In re NFL Sunday Ticket