NCAA hopes former Ohio State QB’s loss will end ‘Cardiac Pack’ lawsuit
The National Collegiate Athletic Association hopes a recent court ruling against former Ohio State football quarterback Terrelle Pryor will spell the end of a lawsuit from members of North Carolina State University’s 1983 national championship men’s basketball team.
Twelve members of the “Cardiac Pack” accuse the NCAA of profiting illegally from players’ names, images, and likenesses for decades.
The NCAA filed a document Friday in North Carolina Business Court. The association is asking Judge Mark Davis to take note of an Ohio federal court ruling earlier that day in Pryor v. NCAA.
US Chief District Judge Sarah Morrison ruled that Pryor waited too long to file a class-action suit against the NCAA, Ohio State, and the Big Ten conference. Pryor had played for the Buckeyes from 2008 to 2010. His suit on behalf of fellow OSU players alleged that the defendants violated antitrust law by barring athletes from seeking NIL compensation.
Morrison dismissed “similar claims brought by the Plaintiffs in this action,” NCAA lawyers wrote in the North Carolina court filing.
“Judge Morrison concluded that each of the Pryor plaintiff’s antitrust and unjust enrichment claims were untimely and not subject to tolling,” the court filing continued. “The defect with the claims brought in Pryor are identical to defects the NCAA has argued require dismissal of Plaintiffs’ claims in this action. Thus, Pryor supports the NCAA’s motion to dismiss this case.”
In court cases, tolling involves suspending or delaying a deadline such as the statute of limitations.
Davis held a May 1 hearing on the NCAA’s motion to dismiss the Cardiac Pack case. In March, he issued an order rejecting the association’s request to stay the proceedings.
“In a nutshell, this lawsuit alleges that the NCAA has maintained an anticompetitive monopoly over the collegiate athletics industry in North Carolina and that it has profited off of this monopoly over the last several decades by refusing to compensate Plaintiffs for the continued use of ‘their names, images, and likenesses or for their contribution[s] to the evolution of March Madness as a revenue-generating juggernaut,’” Davis wrote.
The former NCSU players filed suit on June 10, 2024. “On 1 July 2024, several weeks after filing this lawsuit, several of the same attorneys representing Plaintiffs in the present action initiated the Chalmers litigation” in New York, Davis explained. The Chalmers federal case had 15 named plaintiffs who were college basketball players. None played at NC State.
The NCAA filed its motion to stay the North Carolina case last November. The former Wolfpack players objected.
“The NCAA highlights the fact that there is an overlap between Plaintiffs’ attorneys in this lawsuit and the attorneys representing the named plaintiffs in Chalmers,” Davis wrote. “However, the NCAA has failed to cite any legal authority for the proposition that a similarity in the composition of counsel between two cases is a valid legal substitute for a similarity in the actual parties.”
“When parallel lawsuits exist in separate jurisdictions, a number of courts have applied a ‘first-filed’ rule whereby proceedings in the first-filed action are prioritized over those in the later-filed action,” Davis explained. If that rule is applicable in this case, “it would support Plaintiffs’ position because the present lawsuit is the first-filed of the two actions.”
“With regard to the law applicable to the two lawsuits, the present lawsuit is based entirely on North Carolina law. Chalmers, conversely, involves claims arising solely under federal law,” Davis added.
The judge also looked into the forum the former NCSU players chose for their suit. “Here, eight of the twelve Plaintiffs in this lawsuit are currently citizens of North Carolina. None are citizens of New York,” Davis wrote. “It is also worth noting that the NCAA — by virtue of the locations of its member institutions — is deemed to be a citizen of all fifty states.”
“Plaintiffs specifically chose to litigate this matter in North Carolina state court — a choice that is entitled to a high degree of deference,” he added.
“It cannot reasonably be denied that North Carolina has a strong interest in having this case litigated in its courts,” he added. “This lawsuit involves former members of a basketball team representing a North Carolina public university who contend that the NCAA unjustly enriched itself at their expense by engaging in monopolistic and tortious conduct involving the use of their names, images, and likenesses in connection with their participation in an athletic program based in this State.”
Davis holds undergraduate and law degrees from NC State’s chief rival, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“Although the NCAA would no doubt prefer for all claims on this subject to be litigated in a single lawsuit, it has failed to show that a denial of a stay here would amount to a ‘substantial injustice,’” Davis wrote.
“NCAA hopes former Ohio State QB’s loss will end ‘Cardiac Pack’ lawsuit” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.
