NFL Wins Dismissal of Super Bowl Ticket Lottery Class Action

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New Jersey Supreme Court justices handed down a decision in an NFL class action lawsuit that the 2014 Super Bowl ticket public lottery was not a state statutory violation.

The lead plaintiff in the NFL class action lawsuit, Josh Finkelman, argued that the lottery violated a law on the books that has since been repealed, but was active at the time of the lottery.

The plaintiff argued that the NFL should have been required to make a total of 95 percent of their tickets available to the public.

The justices, however, determined that the application of such a rule only affected the one percent of tickets that the league elected to make available for sale to the public.

The unanimous opinion of the NJ Supreme Court justices in the NFL class action lawsuit was that the 95 percent rule only applied to the withholding of tickets that would be available for sale to the general public.

The decision stated that there were also no indications during the 17 years of entertainment events that occurred while the statute was applicable that it was intended to be followed or enforced in the manner suggested by the lead plaintiff.

Finkelman filed the NFL class action lawsuit because he did not enter the lottery and instead purchased $800 face value tickets for the price of $2,000 each.

The statute in question in this case is known as the New Jersey Ticket Law, but it was later repealed by the state Legislature.

The NFL ticket class action lawsuit argued that the sale of the Super Bowl tickets directly violated the statute at the time the lottery occurred.

The Supreme Court justices determined that all lottery winner tickets were released for sale to the general public and stated and the argument that the lottery winner tickets involved a bigger pool of people was not sufficient as a strong argument by the plaintiff.

The opinion in that NFL class action lawsuit explains that the statute active at the time of the lottery doesn’t put a limit on withholding tickets but instead restricts any withholding of the ticket groupings that would otherwise be made available for public sale.

The justices stated that the other 99 percent of tickets available for that Super Bowl event were never intended to be sold to the public.

The plaintiff and his legal representatives, however, argued that this interpretation of the law doesn’t make sense with the intention of the law.

They believe that the law’s intention was to make tickets to sporting events accessible and available to the public at a decent face value.

Many consumers had lodged complaints with legislators about their inability to obtain affordable tickets based on what was released to the public prior to the passage of the now-repealed statute.

Finkelman is represented by Bruce H. Nagel, Robert H. Solomon, and Greg M. Kohn of Nagel Rice LLP.

The NFL Super Bowl Ticket Lottery Class Action Lawsuit is Josh Finkelman, et al. v. National Football League, et al., Case No. 080501, in the Supreme Court of the State of New Jersey.