Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Middendorf Wins Judgment For Over $500,000 Against Top Rank In Crawford Contract Dispute

Chris Middendorf's company Middendorf Sports won a judgment of $520,296.87 plus prejudgment interest in its suit against Top Rank in U.S. Federal Court, District of Nebraska, over their contractual percentage owed on Terence Crawford's purses for title defenses.  Judge John Gerrard issued the opinion on Sunday.

This suit was brought in January 2017 after Top Rank stopped paying a fee equal to 8% of Crawford's title defense purses which they contracted to pay Middendorf in an Agreement and Release that enabled Crawford to sign with Top Rank back in 2011.

The Court found that the language in the Agreement and Release was "unambiguous" that "Top Rank is obliged to pay Middendorf eight percent of Crawford's 'purse' for any Crawford "title defense" that Top Rank promotes pursuant to a promotional rights agreement."  The Court determined that the obligation to pay the fee did not terminate when Top Rank signed Crawford to an Exclusive Restated Promotional Agreement in 2014.  The Court had essentially made this determination in its opinion on Top Rank's motion for summary judgment back in April 2018.

The parties still had a dispute over the meaning of the terms "purse" and "title defense" and recently went to trial over these issues. 

Top Rank argued that the term "purse" did not include additional revenues from gate participation that were paid to Crawford. The Court disagreed and held that gate participation was also part of the purse. The Court found that the term "purse", within the meaning of the Agreement and Release, meant "simply the remuneration paid to Crawford."

Regarding the meaning of the term "title defense", Top Rank argued that a "unification bout" did not come under the definition of a "title defense" and was a separate type of bout where no fees were owed to Middendorf.  The Court found that "Top Rank's argument that the categories of "title defense" and "unification bout" are mutually exclusive is not supported by the evidence."  The Court reasoned that a bout can be both a unification and a title defense.

No word on whether Top Rank will appeal.

See the Court's Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law:
See the Judgment:

5 comments:

  1. Wonderful blog found to be very impressive to come across such an awesome blog. I should really appreciate the blogger for the efforts they have put in to develop such amazing content for all the curious readers who are very keen on being updated across every corner. Ultimately, this is an awesome experience for the readers. Anyways, thanks a lot and keep sharing the content in the future too.

    Digital Marketing Training in Bangalore

    ReplyDelete
  2. The truly mind-blowing blog went amazed with the subject they have developed the content. This kind of post is really helpful to gain knowledge of unknown things which surely triggers to motivate and learn the new innovative contents. Hope you deliver the similar successive contents forthcoming as well.

    Cyber Security Course

    ReplyDelete
  3. Truly incredible blog found to be very impressive due to which the learners who go through it will try to explore themselves with the content to develop the skills to an extreme level. Eventually, thanking the blogger to come up with such phenomenal content. Hope you arrive with similar content in the future as well.

    Machine Learning Course in Bangalore

    ReplyDelete
  4. Happy to chat on your blog, I feel like I can't wait to read more reliable posts and think we all want to thank many blog posts to share with us.

    Cyber Security Training in Bangalore

    ReplyDelete

Great Show At The Hammerstein Tomorrow

 Great show at the Hammerstein tomorrow night: TRILLERVERZ IV THIS THURSDAY NIGHT!   #2 RANKED HEAVYWEIGHT MICHAEL HUNTER VS. JERRY FORREST ...