Court documents filed by the Pac 12 disputing the MWC withdrawal fee

The complaint and letters exchanged between the MWC and Pac 12 before the filing. UPDATE 11/25

Sep 25, 2024

Here are the court documents (except for a cover sheet and a copy of the Pac 12/MWC Agreement, which you can download from a previous post). The letters exchanged before the complaint are just over one page. The complaint is 24 pages.

The summation of the complaint is here:

Here are some tidbits from the filing (which obviously are one-sided in favor the the Pac 12):

The MWC more than doubled their demand for compensation to schedule games for a second year.

The complaint argues that merger talks, described as the Definitive Transaction was not the definitive transaction.

The complaint does not mention that the MWC requested $1.0 million for a basketball scheduling agreement. Since the Pac 12 was not under the same time constraints to sign that deal, the Pac 12 was able to find a partner in the WCC at a fraction of that cost ($175,000).

I will post the MWC response when it is available and will follow the legal analysis of this case closely. My reading of the agreement before the complaint was that 1) the primary purpose (Definitive Transaction) was a merger, and 2) the withdrawal fees were legal. Both assumptions from a plain reading of the document may be incorrect.