M.L.B. Drama, ‘Top Gun’ Lawsuit, Weinstein’s Next Move

Welcome back to The Rainmaker, my private newsletter focused on the legal intrigues of Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Washington, and Wall Street.
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Happy Monday, I’m Eriq Gardner.

Welcome back to The Rainmaker, my private newsletter focused on the legal intrigues of Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Washington, and Wall Street.

For those who enjoyed my column last month about test cases designed to force the American legal system to confront the impact of A.I. on intellectual property, I’ll be speaking on June 15 at the UCLA Entertainment Symposium on a panel entitled, “AI, Avatars and Deep Fakes: Ethical and Legal Issues for the Entertainment Industry.” More info here. Oh, and that lawsuit I said would be coming over the Copyright Office’s refusal to register a work authored by a machine? It’s been filed.

In today’s column, I spotlight America’s pastime: baseball. OK, make that suing over baseball. This past week marked the centennial of Major League Baseball’s antitrust exemption, and it’s freshly relevant. I also cover Harvey Weinstein, Michael Avenatti, and on the brighter side, free PACER searches! Finally, a nod to an assault trial next month for a Hollywood actor. I’ll give you a hint about the defendant: His name rhymes with Lonny Tepp.

P.S. As a reminder, you're receiving the free version of The Rainmaker at . For full access to Puck, and to each of my colleagues, you can subscribe here.

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M.L.B.’s Favorite Loophole Finally Faces Extinction

Major League team owners have good reason to believe that baseball’s lucrative, illogical, century-old antitrust exemption may be coming to an end.

ERIQ GARDNER

Baseball is a slow game. So is litigation. But this season, something unusual is happening. Four minor league baseball teams are attempting to get to the Supreme Court as quickly as the judicial system will allow. That means that these four teams have invited a federal judge to reject a lawsuit they filed late last year against Major League Baseball. No oral hearing requested. Go ahead and dismiss our claims because you must, they recently told the judge. Afterwards, these four teams will take their case to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, but only because that’s a necessary pit stop. The teams don’t have expectations to win there either. Indeed, it might be like the 1989 Charlie Sheen classic, Major League, where the team’s owner purposely engineers a losing effort. Only after defeat at the intermediate appellate level will the real action begin.

This case features the Staten Island Yankees, the Norwich Sea Unicorns, the Salem-Keiser Volcanoes, and the Tri-City Valleycats taking on Major League Baseball and Commissioner Rob Manfred after the teams’ affiliations with big-league clubs were eliminated as part of a 2020 restructuring of the minors. Now represented by the prestigious law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, along with former players’ union attorney James Quinn, the plaintiffs allege that M.L.B.’s decision to “artificially reduce” the number of major-minor affiliations “in order to cut expenses” is “nothing less than a naked, horizontal agreement to cement M.L.B.’s dominance over all professional baseball.”...

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