Charlotte, NC (AP) – The two teams continue Nascar on antitrust allegations said on Wednesday in a file that a Cover-coverage against 23Xi Racing, Front Row Motorsports and Manager of Michael Jordan is “an act of despair” and asked that it be rejected.
Nascar’s plans argues that Jordan Business Manager Curtis Polk “Voluntarily” violated antitrust laws by orchestrating anti -competitive collective conduct within the framework of the most recent charter agreements.
23X and first row were the only two out of 15 organizations which refused to sign the new agreements, which were presented to the teams last September in an offer to take away 48 hours before the start of the NASCAR qualifiers.
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The charters were carried out by the teams before the 2016 season and twice were extended. The last extension is seven years to correspond to the current media rights agreement and guarantees 36 of the 40 places in the field of each week to the teams that hold the charters, as well as other financial incentives. 23xi – co -owner by Jordan – and the first row refused to sign and continue, alleging that Nascar and the France family who have the series of car stocks are a monopoly.
Wednesday’s file says that Nascar’s reconvention request is a “reprisals” and “does not allege the facts necessary to express a complaint”.
“Nascar uses the recording demand to engage in the game of disputes, with the transparent objective of intimidating the other racing teams by threatening them with serious consequences if they support the complainants’ challenge to the monopoly of illegal nascar,” said the answer.
23XI and the first row requested that NASCAR’s reconvention request be rejected because it “fails the threshold because it does not allege the facts plausably displaying a contract, a combination or a conspiracy in terms of restraint of the trade.
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“Recontent request allegations rather show that each race team individually determining the opportunity to accept or not the requests for NASCAR through individual negotiations – the opposite of a plot.”
The file also defends Polk, who was specifically targeted in Nascar’s reconvention request as a two -year -old litigious battle between teams and the stock of stocks of stocks. Nascar said in his counter-communion that Polk threatened a boycott of the Daytona 500 qualification team, but the teams argued on Wednesday: “There is no allegation that a boycott also threatened with qualification races forever took place.”
“None of the factual demands of NASCAR appears in the very close categories of manifestly anti-competitive actions that the courts condemn in itself,” said the teams.
Jordan, through a spokesperson, sent a word to the Associated Press that Polk speaks for him and the NBA icon considers any attack on Polk as “personal”.
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Nascar’s lawyer warned that a consequence of the 23Xi and first row trial could lead to the abolition of the charter system – Nascar argues that this would be a consequence and not what Nascar really wants to do – and that 23Xi did this first time by naming the president of Nascar, Jim France, in the original antitrust trial.
However, the teams resumed the threat of eliminating the charter system in the Wednesday file. He alleys that this is an empty threat intended to scare the 13 organizations that have signed the charter agreements.
The complaint also indicates that the first row should be rejected from the counter-compliance of NASCAR because “NASCAR does not add to any specific conduct by the first row or its owners or its employees to support a complaint that it participated in the alleged plot.”
“The other allegations in the reconventional request against the first row are all completely conclusive or incorporated to plead which seeks to group in the first row with 23X, Mr. Polk and” others “, while never identifying anything – if anything – the first row motorsport itself has done to claim that the alleged conspiracy.”
There is no deadline for the decision of a judge.
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AP Racing Automatic: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
