Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody on Thursday filed a complaint against the Atlantic Coast Conference demanding that the conference produce the ESPN-ACC television contract as part of a public records request. If successful, the lawsuit could indirectly make public broadcast deals that other conferences also have with major networks.
Moody submitted a public records request in January for the contract, which remains at ACC headquarters, where league members are only allowed to view it in person and cannot make copies. The ACC rejected the request the same month.
“ACC is asking a state entity – Florida State University – to pay and potentially lose more than half a billion dollars, but refuses to produce documents related to this outrageous price,” Moody said in a statement. “We sent a public records request to the ACC in January, but they failed to fully comply. We are taking legal action against the ACC for wrongfully withholding these important public documents.
Moody’s lawsuit, filed in Leon County, Florida, is the third legal challenge surrounding the State of Florida’s attempt to withdraw from the ACC rights contract, alongside the lawsuit from FSU v. ACC in Florida and the ACC v. FSU lawsuit in North Carolina. Earlier this month, a North Carolina business court judge allowed ACC to place portions of the television contract under seal and out of the public domain.
In its denial of Moody’s public records request on Jan. 19, the ACC cited trade secrets and argued that the contract was between the ACC and ESPN and not a public entity like FSU, which is not than a member of the conference. The conference declined Thursday to comment on the new lawsuit.
“These agreements contain commercially sensitive and proprietary information that, if publicly disclosed, would irreparably harm the ability of the Conference and ESPN to negotiate future rights agreements,” ACC general counsel wrote, Pearlynn Houck, in January. “The Conference has an obligation to ESPN, as a party to the Agreements, to protect its fundamental business interests as reflected in the Agreements. Courts across the country have protected these types of agreements, including the current agreements between the Conference and ESPN, in various lawsuits.
“These agreements further require that ESPN and the Conference take all measures to preserve and protect the confidentiality of these agreements and prohibit their disclosure to third parties. The Conference has taken appropriate steps to protect the confidentiality of these agreements by limiting access to them and maintaining them only at its headquarters, which is standard industry practice for media agreements signed by sports conferences.
This case will not only impact Florida State and the ACC. If Moody’s lawsuit is successful, other television deals involving lectures with public universities in Florida could also become public record, said Kevin Paule, an attorney with Hill Ward Henderson in Florida. Athleticism. This includes the SEC (Florida), Big 12 (UCF), American Athletic Conference (USF, FAU), Conference USA (Florida International) and others. It could also open up conference television contracts in other states, depending on their public records laws.
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