Finkelman v. NFL — civil — reversal — Fuentes

The introduction of today’s opinion:

Plaintiff Josh Finkelman had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy tickets to Super Bowl XLVIII held in his home state of New Jersey in February 2014. However, the National Football League (“NFL”) withheld almost all of these tickets—99%—from the general public for league insiders, offering the remaining 1% to lucky winners of a lottery that all could enter. To get his tickets, Finkelman turned to the secondary market, purchasing two tickets with a face value of $800 each for $2000 each. One month before the Super Bowl, he filed suit, alleging that the NFL’s ticket distribution violated New Jersey law. Specifically, Finkelman claims that the NFL’s withholding of more than 5% of the available tickets for the Super Bowl violated the New Jersey Ticket Law. He has now had two opportunities before our Court to show that he has Article III standing to pursue this claim. In our first decision on this subject, we found that he did not. He has since added claims about how the NFL’s secondary ticket market functioned and how the NFL’s actions raised ticket prices on the secondary market. The District Court found that these additional allegations remained insufficient to allege Finkelman’s standing. We disagree. Based on the plausible economic facts pleaded in Finkelman’s amended complaint, we conclude that Finkelman has standing and we therefore have subject matter jurisdiction over this case. We defer action on the merits of this appeal pending decision by the Supreme Court of New Jersey on the pending petition for certification of questions of state law.

My post on the prior appeal is here.

Joining Fuentes were Smith and Stark D.Del. by designation. Arguing counsel were Bruce Nagel of Nagel Rice for the ticketbuyer and Jonathan Pressment of Haynes & Boone for the league.