Falsely Induced Dismissal of Consumer Complaint Over Their Anticompetitive Practices
Fearful that Tiger Woods Documents Would Be Made Public
(September 9, 2024) FREEDOMWATCHUSA.ORG. — Larry Klayman, a former federal prosecutor who was on the trial team that broke up the AT&T monopoly during the Reagan administration, the founder of Judicial Watch and now Freedom Watch and a former candidate for the U.S. Senate in Florida, announced today that he would file a new complaint against the PGA Tour and its Commissioner Jay Monahan over their having fraudulently induced the dismissal of a consumer lawsuit he filed two and a half years ago against them alleging anticompetitive actions to harm the LIV Golf Tour and its players. These anticompetitive acts included colluding with the Official Golf World Ranking (OWGR), the DP World Tour and NBC’s Golf Channel (TGC) to kill LIV Golf in its infancy by denying LIV players world ranking points such that they could compete in major tournaments, suspending and fining LIV players from competing on the PGA Tour and DP World Tour, the PGA Tour’s joint venture partner in Europe and around the world, and using the TGC to commit trade libel against LIV players to scare away sponsors.
During the limited discovery that ensued, Tiger Woods, who sits on the PGA Tour’s Advisory Committee and is a PGA Tour official, was forced to produce documents about his alleged involvement in the anticompetive scheme to monopolize the golf industry.
The PGA Tour and Monahan, along with lawyers for Woods, fought tooth and nail to keep the Woods documents from being made public. Incredibly, the NYC lawyers representing Woods, Kaplan, Hecker & Fink, are the same lawyers, with the support of Democrat donors, who represented the woman, E. Gene Carroll, who miraculously “remembered” about 40 years after the alleged fact, that President Donald Trump has “raped” her in a NYC department store dressing room, and then filed suit, for which a rabidly leftist anti-Trump NYC judge and jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation. The local counsel for the Kaplan firm is David Markus, also a partisan Democrat lawyer who also represented Hillary Clinton in a RICO case brought by President Trump over the Russian collusion “witch hunt,” triggered by the illegal actions of Mrs. Clinton.
This case was presided upon by a Palm Beach Circuit Court judge, the Honorable Louis Delgado, who carries a caseload, without law clerks to help him as would be the case in federal court, of over 1000 cases. Thus taking advantage of the jurist’s lack of time and preparedness, the PGA Tour, Monahan and Woods’ attorneys presented non-record false factual and legal argument to the Court, which Judge Delgado incorrectly relied upon, causing him to effectively rubber stamp a proposed order submitted by the Defendants without any apparent and little to no bona fide backup research to confirm its truthfulness. This does not exonerate Judge Delgado, who has appeared never to have grasped the gravamen of Mr. Klayman’s consumer complaint, likely because he has not had the time to delve thoroughly into the facts and law and perhaps, after two and one half years of calculated delay, just got tired of and was overwhelmed by the mountain of pleadings thrown at him by the attorneys for Defendants and Woods. The judge also likely covets a federal judgeship and the mega law firms, Sidley & Austin and Skadden Arps, lawyers representing the PGA Tour and Monahan are very influential in this regard.
The dismissal of last Friday was largely without prejudice, meaning that the case can still be refiled in some form, but the order signed by Judge Delgado is so wrong that Mr. Klayman immediately filed a notice of appeal to attempt to preserve not just the totality of the case, but on principle. This notice of appeal can be found on the docket at Klayman et. al v. PGA Tour et al, 50-2022-CA-006587 (15th Jud. Cir., Palm Beach County).
Importantly, very few pleadings can be found on the court’s docket, because Judge Delgado has allowed the case to be turned into a virtually secret star chamber, with little to no public access. This is contrary to the law as well, as court proceedings, particularly this one, was filed in the public interest, with the right of golf fans and the consuming public to know of the alleged monopolistic acts of the PGA Tour and its Commissioner, in collusion with Tiger Woods and other PGA Tour officials such as Rory McIllroy.
As a result, Mr. Klayman, on behalf of himself and similarly situated golf fans, who have been deprived of seeing LIV players compete head to head against PGA Tour and DP World Tour players, will be asking Judge Delgado to correct the record and vacating his dismissal order by doing his “homework” and not relying on the fraudulent non-record representations of the PGA Tour and Monahan in particular, prior to the docketing of the appeal, or instead Mr. Klayman will be forced to file another suit, this one for fraud against the PGA Tour, Monahan and Tiger Woods, the latter of who fears that the documents he was forced to produce, with great resistance, will ultimately become public.
