Wwe's DarthVader Jerry"prince" Mcdevitt speaks

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Jerry McDevitt, WWE Attorney, Talks Current Lawsuits And Vince McMahon

Didn't know he was allowed to do interviews :ohhh:
The WWE Network royalties lawsuit being dismissed:
I think (Rene) Dupree was being manipulated by the same lawyer that has been running around bringing these CTE cases against the company and in fact we know he is. That whole business started with this guy advertising on the internet looking for people to sue the WWE and that he’s made various promises and representations to these people about what he thinks he is going to get for them and all the rest of that. After the judge in the CTE cases issued her subsequent rulings throwing out two of the cases and five-sixths of the other one while expressing skepticism about whether that claim would survive, shortly after that we believe he got Dupree to bring this royalties case as kind of a way to deflect attention from what was happening in the other cases and knowing full well that frankly Dupree’s case couldn’t go anywhere. As matters turned out (Dupree) evidently didn’t tell the lawyers he recruited to bring the case and to hide his own involvement that he had signed not one but two contracts that prohibited him from bringing such claims and as soon as the lawsuit was brought to my attention I sent an email the night they filed it to the lawyer in Chicago.

I brought this to the attention of the Chicago lawyer and said I assume you don’t know this because any lawyer who saw these documents wouldn’t bring this lawsuit but here is what your client signed. And as you can see it absolutely prohibits this lawsuit that you’ve brought and that I demand you withdraw it immediately. And he wrote back saying very professionally thank you and that I was not aware of this and that he’ll look into it. And I am sure he did and as the evidence shows, he then withdrew the lawsuit which was the only proper thing he could have done frankly. He could have not continued the lawsuit at all once. I brought that to his attention and Dupree would have known it too, and it was all designed I think to create some negative publicity for the company and see if they could maybe get somebody better then Dupree to bring such a lawsuit which is kind of “trolling” if you will for a plaintiff.

How does the dismissed case differ from the Doug Somers/Gilbert Family lawsuits:
I don’t think it does. They were trying to make it different by making contractual claims but these claims have never succeeded yet and I don’t think they ever will. Gilbert, Somers and there are a bunch of cases like Freddie Dryer and a bunch of guys that opted out of the NFL and if you remember the NFL had similar cases. They had a class action case brought against them from former NFL players on the NFL Network which the NFL as they seem to do, have a lot of money to throw around and they chose to settle with that class and pay them some money. But a couple guys, including Freddie Dryer, and the rest of about twelve others opted out of that class and brought their own lawsuit alleging that the NFL owed them more money then I guess was bigger than they would have got through the class action settlement (which was kind of a dumb move). Now you have to survive motions to dismiss that can be filled to dismiss such claims and the NFL did and they lost and the court threw their claims out.

Basically, the way the law works on this stuff is pretty simple. We are the owner of the copyrights of all of these things. The WWE is the sole and exclusive owner of the copyrights. Federal copyright law rewards the people who make the investments in creating these copyrighted works and go out and hire the talent and the stadiums and the cameras and all the expense of creating these films with exclusive rights of display, reproduction and sale. So when these people come in and say you are being unjustly and I’m not getting any of this money, the defense is always that the federal copyright law gives us the exclusive right to do it and preempts any of these state law claims that you are trying to assert that would burden our rights of ownership and they get thrown out every time.

The reason why talent from defunct promotions have no claim to royalties from WWE Network:
The reason why talent from defunct promotions have no claim to royalties from WWE Network:
Let me use ECW as an example. ECW if you recall your history went into Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Whenever you go into a Chapter 7 bankruptcy what happens is your assets and your liabilities are marshalled. The bankruptcy trustee tries to sell the assets of the bankruptcy estate to generate some cash to pay off creditors who would be for example any ECW talent that are owed money from ECW and would share any money that is available which is usually not very much because when you are bankrupt you don’t get very much and when somebody goes bankrupt like ECW does it essentially wipes out all the claims of anybody that they would have against ECW for contract royalties or contract claims against ECW. The assets of the company are put up for sale free and clear of all liens and that is part of the whole bankruptcy sale. When you think about it nobody is going to buy assets that carry with it liabilities. So what you had there was this entire film library of ECW that would have been sitting somewhere in a cardboard box right now and not being displayed anywhere, and the WWE decided it would buy and pay money to buy the films and the copyrights that go with those films and obtain from the bankruptcy court a bill of sale giving the WWE in exchange for the money we paid for those the sole right, title and interest to the copyrights of those works. That is why the WWE has the legal right to display them on the Network free and clear of any claims, plain and simple.

Is Vince McMahon preserving the history of Professional Wrestling:
Yes and I think you can see it by his actions. He is a custodian of wrestling history right now and it’s been his whole life. It’s been the life of his family, it’s generational. I think he cares greatly about the history of this business and has great respect for the people who have been part of it and who have helped him build it.

How would he describe Vince McMahon:
 
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