A legal slap-match has surfaced in federal court in Detroit, where scores of bars and restaurants are getting slapped with lawsuits for televising boxing championships.
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The defendants — many of them mom-and-pop venues — are supposed to pay a fee of $800-$3,000 to show the fights, according to the lawsuits.
Instead, records charge, they’re stealing the television signals.
Among the plaintiffs is California-based J&J Sports Production, a sporting events distributor that is sending private eyes into bars and restaurants nationwide in search of TV signal pirates.
According to the lawsuits, J&J has paid for the right to distribute various fights and charges fees to bars and restaurants that want to show them.
Per the federal court dockets, private eyes are finding hundreds of scofflaws nationwide.
In metro Detroit, more than 50 piracy lawsuits have been filed against local businesses in the last three years. Five were filed Nov. 11, and plenty more are in the pipeline.
Though most of the cases get settled out of court, some bar owners fight back. They argue they either didn’t know about the fee or that they paid the cable company for the boxing match.
Whatever the excuse, J&J says the message is clear: Pay the fee or prepare to get sucker-punched with a lawsuit.
Showdown over TV boxing matches at bars
When a private investigator walked into the Brews Brothers Bar and Grill in Melvindale, it wasn’t hard to figure out a boxing championship was going on.
On the bar’s 13 TV screens, Oscar De La Hoya — in red trunks with white letters spelling Golden Boy — was taking on Floyd Mayweather. It was Round 3 of the May 5, 2007, match at the MGM Grand Casino in Las Vegas.
The investigator, who was on a mission to prove the bar was illegally televising the showdown, got what he needed, records show.
His findings triggered a lawsuit.
“It’s not hard to catch ’em,” said Mt. Clemens attorney Ben Altoia, who said he believes TV signal piracy lawsuits are a pervasive problem nationwide, including in metro Detroit. “There are bars that have been caught, and then a year later … they’re caught again, and again. They think, ‘Well, we got caught once. The heat is off us. Maybe no one is looking.’ ”
That’s not the case.
In federal court in Detroit, more than 50 TV signal piracy lawsuits involving boxing matches have been filed in the last three years — five of them filed Nov. 11 alone. The latest defendants are Man Dee’s Lounge, Club Millenium and Keynote Sports Bar & Lounge — all in Detroit; Los Amigos in Ypsilanti Township, and Bistro Bar and Grill in Pittsfield Township.
All five establishments are accused of televising the Manny Pacquiao vs. Miguel Cotto welterweight championship on Nov. 14, 2009. The lawsuits each seek $150,000 in damages.
Some say that’s extreme.
“Usually, the bar owner doesn’t even know what they’re doing is wrong,” said California attorney Matthew Pare, who specializes in TV signal piracy cases across the country. “It goes, in my opinion, way too far. The damages are extremely excessive.”
Pare, who is currently handling at least 30 piracy lawsuits in several states, said that in most cases, the defendants have paid something for the boxing match — just not the right amount.
For example, Pare said, the bar and restaurant owners may have a residential TV subscription with a particular company and pay that rate for the fight — unaware they have to have a commercial subscription rate.
In other cases, he said, the pub may have paid the cable company for the fight and assumes everything is taken care of, when it’s not.
That’s what the Blackberry Bar and Grill in Detroit is arguing in a pending case with J&J Productions, a California-based sporting event distributor suing the pub for allegedly stiffing it on a boxing match fee. According to the lawsuit, the establishment on Grand River Avenue unlawfully televised “The Dream Match” welterweight championship between De La Hoya and Manny Pacquiao on Dec. 6, 2008.
In court documents, Blackberry said it paid Comcast a fee to show the fight but that Comcast never informed the bar it needed a sublicensing agreement to show the match.
“My client is just a mom-and-pop operation,” said Southfield attorney Arlene Woods, who is defending the Blackberry Bar and Grill.
She said the bar asked Comcast what it needed to do to televise the fight. “We followed 100% what Comcast instructed my client to do,” Woods said, without elaborating.
Comcast has denied any liability in court documents. Comcast officials declined to comment to the Free Press.
The cable argument also may come into play for Man Dee’s Lounge, which was sued Nov. 11.
The bar’s owner, Alvin Taylor, who learned about the lawsuit from the Free Press, said he wasn’t sure about showing any boxing matches. He said he would check his cable bill.
“I know the consequences for showing the fight,” said Taylor, noting he doesn’t show boxing matches because it costs too much. “I can’t afford it, so I don’t have them.”
The same goes for David Corona, general manager of Los Amigos, which also was sued Nov. 11.
“We never show fights. It’s too expensive,” said Corona, who said he’ll get a lawyer and dig out his satellite bill.
