UFC lawsuit: Details & full documents on Zuffa’s motion to transfer venue and advance hearing date

Check out details and full documents filed by the UFC as they look to change the venue from Northern California to Las Vegas, Nevada. Read letters by the Plaintiff to Dana White and Twitter about deletion of past entries.

Written by Anton Tabuena and John Nash

As with our earlier update on the on-going anti-trust lawsuits against the UFC, Zuffa has filed a motion to advance the hearing date from May 7 to March 26, 2015, and a motion to transfer venue to their home base of Nevada.

BloodyElbow.com has obtained copies of the said documents filed on January 30th. The documents sent by Zuffa's lawyers layout several arguments why the case should be transferred from Northern California to Nevada. They argue that not only is the state a more "convenient venue" for the parties and witnesses involved, there are also "few meaningful connections between these actions and the Northern District of California".

They bring up that two out of the three actions don't have plaintiffs residing in the district, and that the only 3rd-party based out of Northern California that was named is video game publisher Electronic Arts.

As one of their more notable arguments, they also brought up the fighter contracts signed by plaintiffs Jon Fitch, Pablo Garza, Cung Le and Brandon Vera which had this specific clause in them:

ZUFFA and Fighter hereby (a) expressly consent to the exclusive personal jurisdiction and venue of the state and federal courts located in Clark County, Nevada for any action brought by either party to interpret or enforce any provision of this Agreement; and (b) agree not to assert (by way of motion, as a defense or otherwise) that such legal proceeding has been brought in an inconvenient forum.

As for advancing the hearing date from May to March, UFC lawyers argue that the three lengthy complaints are "essentially identical" and that advancing the hearing "will serve judicial economy" while still giving the plaintiffs "plenty of time to respond".

Unrelated to this current filing but as part of the on-going lawsuit, Joseph Savari has also sent a preservation letter to Twitter Inc. and a litigation hold letter to Dana White. This was in regards to the deletion of tweets from from the UFC President's twitter account and other online entries shortly after the anti-trust lawsuit was filed. The letters were sent on December 18, 2015, just a few days after word came out about the original lawsuit. Saveri represents the Plaintiffs such as Le, Quarry and Fitch, and according to him they expect to "preserve all evidence" related to the case, including entries sent out from all Zuffa twitter accounts.

They have asked twitter to preserve or create backup files and logs of "any deletions or modification of all information" pertaining to the UFC accounts. Their letter to White had a goal of starting a litigation hold to preserve all electronically stored information, to put them on notice that "the duty to preserve evidence has been triggered".

Originally written for Bloody Elbow by Anton Tabuena and John Nash on Feb. 3, 2015