DiCello Levitt, along with five other leading antitrust and labor law firms, filed a landmark antitrust case in New York federal court today, aimed at exposing what plaintiffs allege to be egregiously anticompetitive collusion that targets teenage hockey players across North America.
The class action lawsuit, which names as defendants the National Hockey League, the Canadian Hockey League, the Ontario Hockey League, the Western Hockey League, the Québec Maritimes Junior Hockey League, and each of those leagues’ member clubs, challenges the alleged systematic exploitation of teens pursuing their dreams of playing in the NHL. In this historic litigation, plaintiffs allege that defendants conspired to: 1) restrain competition for players, rendering them nothing more than the property of the major junior teams that draft them; and 2) compensate those players at artificially suppressed, non-competitive levels. The case was filed by the World Association of Icehockey Players Unions North America Division, as well as two former major junior hockey players, who will seek to represent a class of similarly situated players. For more information, please visit www.HockeyAntitrustLitigation.com and see plaintiffs’ press release here.