By: John Pollock & Brandon Thurston
Defendants in the class action complaint filed by Kevin Kelly and Brandon & Brent Tate are seeking to move the case to federal court, citing multiple factors and outlining AEW’s payment to talent and wrestlers, according to new federal court filings.
In late August, Kevin Kelly (Kevin Foote), and the Tates filed a class action complaint in the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia against All Elite Wrestling, Tony Khan, and Ian Riccaboni.
The plaintiffs argue that AEW has misclassified its wrestlers and talent as independent contractors while also alleging wrongful termination for the Tate brothers, and defamation committed against Foote over a comment made by Riccaboni on a Discord channel regarding Foote’s promotion of The Sound of Freedom film.
The plaintiffs filed the complaint on September 6 and the defendants responded on Friday with a request to move the case to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
The plaintiffs plan to respond by requesting the case be returned to the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia.
“We plan to move to remand,” the plaintiffs’ attorney Stephen New told POST Wrestling and Wrestlenomics when reached for comment on Friday.
Attorneys for AEW, Khan, and Riccaboni argue that the case meets multiple thresholds under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA), which applies “to any class action before or after the entry of a class certification order by the court with respect to that action.”
Factors to qualify under CAFA include federal jurisdiction for class actions where the amount in controversy exceeds $5 million in the aggregate for the entire class and putative class, containing at least 100 members, and that any member of the putative class is a citizen of a state different than that of the defendant(s).
The misclassification issue is divided into two classes: “all current and former Talent”, presumably covering non-wrestler talent, and secondly, “all current and former Wrestlers”, covering wrestlers. The classes would cover all talent and wrestlers who worked for AEW from September 1, 2022, to the present.
In a declaration from AEW’s Senior Vice President of Business Strategy, Chris Harrington writes that between the dates in question, 290 individuals provided services for AEW as wrestlers or non-wrestling talent under independent contractor agreements and paid those members “more than $60,000,000 in the aggregate,” providing rare insight into AEW’s talent compensation.
The figure would work out to roughly $207,000 paid to each wrestler and talent over the two-year period, although that’s an average, and there’s likely disparity in compensation across talent and wrestlers.
Disclosure: Brandon Thurston operates and solely owns Wrestlenomics LLC. Chris Harrington originally started using the Wrestlenomics name in 2013 and he and Thurston co-hosted the Wrestlenomics Radio podcast together from 2017 to 2018. Harrington has no ownership or role in Wrestlenomics today.
Harrington adds that ten members of the class hold residency in the state of Pennsylvania, which equals 3.4% of the class. Defendants Brandon & Brent Tate are residents of Tennessee. Ian Riccaboni is a resident of Pennsylvania. Adding to the diversity in jurisdiction issue, AEW is a registered corporation in both Delaware & Florida.
If AEW were to reclassify those members as employees, Harrington writes in the declaration, the company would incur a tax liability of “at least 9.95% of the pay rendered to Putative Class Members, meaning more than $5,970,000 in the aggregate.”
As well, AEW would “incur costs in connection with employee benefits of approximately $18,125 annually per employee, meaning $5,256,250 per year in the aggregate.”
Along with an estimated 30% allocated for attorney fees, AEW lists an estimate of $14,594,125 in expenses associated and greatly exceeding CAFA’s minimum threshold of $5 million.
POST Wrestling and Wrestlenomics reached out to AEW’s attorneys and public relations representatives for comment and will update this report if they respond.
