Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, ANTITRUST—S.D. Ind.: Consolidation denied for NCAA cases challenging scholarship rules, (Sep 25, 2014)

By Greg Hammond, J.D.

Two antitrust cases challenging the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s scholarship rules could not be consolidated, the federal district court in Indianapolis decided. The court reasoned that consolidation would be inappropriate because the NCAA plans to move to dismiss the second-filed complaint and because of differences between the proposed classes (Rock v. National Collegiate Athletic Assn., September 23, 2014, Magnus-Stinson, J.).

Background. John Rock filed a putative class action against the NCAA in 2012, challenging the Association’s rules that prohibit multi-year athletic scholarships for Division I football players and rules imposing a cap on the number of football scholarships that a Division I football team may award. Similarly, in 2014, Durrell Chamorro filed an antitrust putative class action against the NCAA in the same federal district, also challenging the NCAA’s rules prohibiting multi-year athletic scholarships and imposing a cap on the number of football scholarships that a Division I football team may award. Rock moved to consolidate Chamorro’s case with his.

Consolidations would be improper. Despite Rock’s arguments that consolidation would provide the court and the parties with significant savings in time, effort, and expense, the court determined that consolidation would be inappropriate, given the “significant overlap of factual and legal issues between this action and the allegations brought by” Chamorro. Specifically, the court found that consolidation would be impractical because the NCAA was planning on moving to dismiss Chamorro’s complaint, while Rock had already survived such a motion and was on the eve of a class certification motion. Additionally, the court determined that consolidation would be inappropriate because it identified numerous differences in the two case’s putative class definitions.

Reassignment. Although neither party objected to Chamorro’s action being reassigned to the judge in this case, the court found no reason to make such a reassignment. Specifically, the court found that it could not determine how many court resources would be saved by the reassignment, if any, because the NCAA planned to move to dismiss the case and failed to elaborate on the bases for the reassignment.

The case number is 1:12-cv-1019-JMS-DKL.

Attorneys: Daniel J. Kurowski (Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP) for John Rock. Gregory L. Curtner (Schiff Hardin, LLP) for National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Companies: National Collegiate Athletic Association

Cases: Antitrust IndianaNews