Proskauer Secures Victory For Major League Soccer In Antitrust And RICO Case

August 30, 2012 (New York) – Global law firm Proskauer won an important victory for Major League Soccer LLC (MLS) in a long-running and high-profile antitrust and Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) case.

On August 17, Judge Harry Leinenweber of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois granted summary judgment in favor of MLS and co-defendant the United States Soccer Federation (USSF) in a lawsuit brought by ChampionsWorld LLC, a now-defunct promoter of exhibition soccer matches. ChampionsWorld filed the suit in May 2006, seeking significant treble damages and claiming that USSF did not have authority to sanction and charge fees for matches it promoted and that MLS conspired with USSF to use the latter's sanctioning policies to bolster MLS and to drive ChampionsWorld out of business.

In ruling in favor of MLS, Judge Leinenweber dismissed ChampionsWorld's antitrust claim, holding that the company could not meet the threshold requirements to prove the claim after finding that ChampionsWorld's economic expert's opinion was "neither sufficiently reliable nor sufficiently helpful."

Judge Leinenweber also enforced a July 2011 decision by the Court of...