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The key to a resolution in Oliver Luck’s legal battle against Vince McMahon may be the potential addition of Alpha Entertainment in the lawsuit.
The 23.8 million dollar breach of contract lawsuit filed by former XFL CEO Oliver Luck towards Vince McMahon won’t be resolved until Connecticut federal judge Victor A. Bolden decides whether the league’s corporate parent (Alpha Entertainment) should be added to the case.
Oliver Luck and his team have opposed Vince McMahon’s legal team’s requests.
On Wednesday, in U.S. District Court, Judge Victor A. Bolden said that he would hold off on moving the case forward until he addresses the “threshold issue” of whether Alpha Entertainment LLC should be a part of the lawsuit. Judge Bolden plans on making a quick determination before proceeding with a decision on a prejudgment remedy.
The prejudgment remedy is a request by Oliver Luck’s legal team to have a lien placed on some of McMahon’s assets to ensure he can pay if Luck wins the lawsuit.
Vince McMahon’s attorneys contend that Alpha Entertainment must be added to the case because only then can Judge Bolden determine whether Luck breached the contract with Alpha or not. If Luck was fired for cause, then Alpha legally owes him nothing, and thus there’s nothing to guarantee. McMahon’s team claims it is essential to add Alpha to the case because only Alpha can provide the records to prove that Luck was fired for cause.
McMahon’s stance is that he is not obligated to pay Luck because his firing was justified, citing contract violations such as Luck deserting his responsibilities as the CEO and commissioner when the league faced its most significant crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The contention is that Luck decided to leave Connecticut and did not devote substantially all of his business time to his XFL duties as required by his contract.
Oliver Luck’s six attorneys on the case, contend that adding Alpha to the suit is unnecessary because the guarantee McMahon signed with Luck is ironclad and that it requires McMahon to cover any unpaid compensation allegedly owed by Alpha regardless of whether Luck was terminated “for cause,” An assertion that McMahon’s legal team feels is an absurd one.
Oliver Luck’s contract with Alpha Entertainment was a $5 million annual base salary with an annual $2 million bonus if certain conditions were met. The agreement was due to expire in 2023, and Luck claims he’s still owed $23.8 million.
Oliver Luck’s legal team is going after Vince McMahon rather than Alpha Entertainment. An odd but not unprecedented legal recourse to pursue the guarantor directly. The argument by Luck is that McMahon signed a guarantee under which he agreed to honor the contract in the event Alpha failed to pay.
Luck was fired on April 9. Alpha suspended XFL operations, shortly after that, and laid off most of its employees. Luck sued McMahon roughly a week after that.
The XFL will be selling off its assets at an August bankruptcy auction, and Vince McMahon is providing a $3.5 million debtor-in-possession loan to see the league through to the end of that process.
