- A North Carolina Business Court judge has rejected the NCAA's request to stay proceedings in a lawsuit filed by 12 members of NC State University's 1983 men's basketball national championship team.
- Judge Mark Davis denied a motion to set the "Cardiac Pack" suit aside as the NCAA deals with a federal lawsuit in New York addressing similar issues.
- The lawsuit claims that the NCAA has benefited illegally from players' names, images, and likenesses for decades.
A North Carolina Business Court judge has denied the NCAA’s motion to stay proceedings in a lawsuit filed by members of North Carolina State University’s 1983 men’s basketball national championship team.
Twelve members of the “Cardiac Pack” accuse the college sports oversight group of profiting illegally from players’ names, images, and likenesses for decades.
The NCAA had asked Judge Mark Davis to set the North Carolina case aside while the organization fights a federal lawsuit in New York dealing with similar issues. Davis issued an order Tuesday rejecting that request.
“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 has 15 named plaintiffs who were all 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.
“Although the NCAA focuses on the overlap between the parties in the present case and those in Chalmers, the degree of overlap is merely partial rather than complete,” Davis wrote.
“It bears emphasis that Plaintiffs are not named parties in Chalmers,” the judge added. “Furthermore, although Plaintiffs could potentially become members of a class that the Chalmers court certifies (assuming they elect to ‘opt in’), no such class has — as of the present date — been certified. Therefore, unless and until that scenario occurs, there is technically no overlap between the Plaintiffs in the present lawsuit and the plaintiffs in Chalmers.”
“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.
Timing also played into Davis’ decision to rule in favor of the plaintiffs. “[T]he granting of a stay would likely result in a significant delay in their ability to seek relief,” he wrote. “If certification of a class is granted in Chalmers, the class would likely include thousands of athletes who participated in NCAA athletic programs from hundreds of different institutions prior to 15 June 2016. As a result of the ensuing complexity of the litigation, it could easily be years before Chalmers is fully resolved.”
“Here, conversely, this lawsuit involves a discrete group of twelve former athletes — all of whom played for a specific university during a specific year. Therefore, the litigation and ultimate resolution of this lawsuit should proceed at a considerably quicker pace,” Davis wrote.
“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.
The judge will hold a hearing “at a later date” on the NCAA’s motion to have the case dismissed.