Miami sued Arkansas State University first.
In a lawsuit submitted Feb. 13, which Arkansas State shared with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Monday, the University of Miami sued Arkansas State for "declaratory relief" regarding their canceled football game in September due to Hurricane Irma. The lawsuit was filed in a Miami-Dade County court.
Miami's lawsuit was submitted three days before Arkansas State submitted its lawsuit for "breach of contract" in a Craighead County court.
Arkansas State issued Miami an ultimatum Feb. 12 that unless Miami paid the game contract's $650,000 buyout or promptly rescheduled the canceled game, it would sue Miami for breach of contract.
Arkansas State did sue Feb. 16, but late last week it received Miami's lawsuit.
Now begins a debate over which university has jurisdiction over the case.
"We are not surprised that Miami took this step," ASU System General Counsel Brad Phelps said in a statement, "and we will respond to their lawsuit in due course."
The focus in both lawsuits is whether the circumstances surrounding Hurricane Irma made it "impossible to play the game," which would free both parties from paying liquidated damages due to a "force majeure" clause that is included in the contract.
Arkansas State claimed in its lawsuit that the game was not impossible to play because it was located in Jonesboro, and that out of the eight college football games that included Football Bowl Subdivision schools from Florida on Sept. 9, the Florida-Northern Colorado game was the only other game to be completely canceled.
It also stated Athletic Director Terry Mohajir offered to pay between $86,000 and $88,000 to fly the Miami football team and staff from Miami to Memphis on a chartered air service to "ensure that Miami could travel safely to Jonesboro."
The Miami lawsuit says "the best information available at that time indicated that UM's flight for the Football Game might not make it out of Miami and a return flight would not be available in a timely fashion after the game."
"Because of the force majeure event," it said, "the liquidated damages provision is not applicable."
The two universities sued each other after they could not agree on a rescheduling date. Miami said the earliest it could reschedule a game in Jonesboro was Sept. 3, 2024. Mohajir consulted a college football scheduling service, Gridiron, which "revealed that Miami had openings in both 2020 and 2021," according to Arkansas State's lawsuit.
Miami's lawsuit said the game contract "does not require that Game 2 be rescheduled within any set time frame and does not state that time is 'of the essence,' " and "while ASU may be disappointed that Game 2 could not be rescheduled to an earlier date, planning games such as these usually is done years in advance, particularly for a football program like [Miami's]."
The Miami lawsuit requested that the court declare that the game "properly was canceled due to a force majeure event," that "ASU has acted unreasonably in refusing to agree to the Available Game 2 Dates" and that Miami "is relieved of any further rescheduling obligation with respect to Game 2 because of ASU's unreasonable conduct."
Sports on 03/06/2018