As Wrigley View Rooftop appeals a federal judge’s decision granting summary judgment to its neighbor, the Chicago Cubs, and entering a permanent injunction blocking the rooftop owners from selling tickets to watch games, concerts and other events at Wrigley Field, the two sides are waging another battle with implications that could extend far beyond Wrigleyville.
The sides are arguing over whether U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman should unseal the trial court record and all the financial information, contracts and potential trade secrets it contains.
The timing is especially important given that MLB is expected to institute a lockout after the current collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the MLB Players Association expires at 11:59 p.m. ET on Dec. 1.
The labor dispute will concern numerous issues, but at its core will be money, including how MLB revenue is divided between owners and players and the owners’ push for a salary cap. There are fears the lockout could extend well into 2027 and lead to lost games.
In professional sports labor disputes, players’ unions often argue that teams are more profitable than they claim. Unsealed financial records from the Cubs could attract attention well beyond this litigation, including from the MLBPA as it prepares for a potentially contentious labor fight.
Unpacking Wrigley View Rooftop’s arguments
In a memorandum authored by Matthew De Preter and other attorneys from Aronberg Goldgehn Davis & Garmisa, Wrigley View Rooftop offers several arguments in hopes of persuading U.S Coleman to unseal the record.
Wrigley View Rooftop highlights that the Cubs “chose to bring this case” and thus “chose to put information at issue in the presumptively public forum of the Federal Court system.”
Unlike litigation in federal court, arbitration and mediation are generally conducted outside the public judicial process and often subject to confidentiality arrangements. Wrigley View Rooftop maintains there is a “strong presumption” in favor of public access to judicial records.
Last year, Coleman denied Wrigley View Rooftop’s motion to dismiss on the grounds that an arbitration provision in a prior settlement agreement was an “improper mechanism” for dismissing the Cubs’ lawsuit. In 2004, the Cubs settled litigation with rooftop businesses, including Wrigley View Rooftop, through agreements that allowed the businesses to sell rooftop access in exchange for payments to the Cubs. The team’s agreement with Wrigley View Rooftop expired on Dec. 31, 2023, and while the Cubs struck deals with other rooftop businesses, they didn’t do so with Wrigley View Rooftop.
Wrigley View Rooftop insists that the Cubs should not “hide behind its self-anointed confidentiality designations to shield the public from the full record of the case and prevent” Wrigley View Rooftop from “fully responding.”
To that point, Wrigley View Rooftop objects to some of the media coverage of the litigation. One specific grievance is with the headline for Sportico’s Aug. 17 story, “Cubs Slam Wrigley View Rooftop as ‘Parasitic’ in Legal Battle.”
The story summarizes and analyzes the Cubs’ criticism of Wrigley View Rooftop’s business model of selling seats and concessions to ticket holders to watch events at Wrigley Field, a business model the Cubs portrayed as parasitic. (To be clear, the Cubs used the word “parasitic,” and Sportico wrote about that.) Wrigley View Rooftop also objects to several stories and videos published by other media.
Wrigley View Rooftop maintains that “the bias of this coverage” reflects the Cubs’ redacting information in court filings to present the team in a more favorable light.
The Cubs, Wrigley View Rooftop insists, “pick and choose what information” to reveal in court filings “so as to unfairly frame” the Cubs’ image “while deriding” Wrigley View Rooftop. The company maintains it would be in the “public interest” for the record to be released.
In addition, Wrigley View Rooftop argues the Cubs have violated the terms of a confidentiality order issued by Coleman, who set parameters for the two sides to discuss which materials ought to be designated as confidential and sealed. Wrigley View Rooftop maintains that the Cubs haven’t explained the rationale for opposing the removal of confidentiality designations.
Wrigley View Rooftop also objects to the sealing of information regarding the Cubs’ installation of signage and screens that partially block rooftops’ views into Wrigley Field. These screens and signs “are within the plain view of the public” and ought not to be considered trade secrets, Wrigley View Rooftop charges.
The company also contends that if it is “parasitic,” as the Cubs charge, the Cubs could have stopped any misappropriation “simply by installing opaque screens that fully blocked the view into Wrigley Field.”
Unpacking the Cubs’ counterarguments
The Cubs offer a starkly different perspective on this topic.
Through a brief authored by Martin Roth and other attorneys from Kirkland & Ellis, the Cubs argue that it is unconvincing for Wrigley View Rooftop to ask Coleman to unseal documents both parties agreed to keep sealed—including documents Wrigley View Rooftop wants sealed—on the basis that the sealing “has somehow rendered [Wrigley View Rooftop] unable to speak to the press.”
The Cubs, which say they’re open to unsealing some documents with appropriate redactions, object to unsealing the entire record, particularly given that both sides have “legitimate business needs for confidentiality” that include “privacy required to protect the Cubs’ trade secrets or their customers’ personally identifying information.”
The Cubs also argue there’s no case precedent for the proposition that “an inability to effectively persuade the media of a party’s position requires widespread unsealing of an entire Court record.”
Further, the Cubs insist the media coverage hasn’t favored the team.
To that end, the Cubs note that last week ESPN published a feature based on its interview with Wrigley View Rooftop owner Aidan Dunican, with the headline “Inside a Wrigleyville Rooftop Owner’s Fight with the Cubs.”
The ESPN story, the Cubs highlight, contains “professionally curated photographs of Dunican on his rooftop, interviews with his friends, supporters, and neighbors, and commentary from an attorney who formerly represented the rooftops in previous iterations of this dispute.”
The Cubs also point out that four of the story’s first five paragraphs mention the screen the Cubs installed, “the only specific issue [Wrigley View Rooftop] claims” it has been “unable to talk about,” the Cubs charge.
In that same vein, the Cubs argue nothing has prevented Wrigley View Rooftop from discussing the case publicly, and the public hasn’t “faced any barriers” to discussing it, either.
The Cubs point out that unsealing the case record would expose customers’ names, contact information and personal credit card numbers.
Further, the Cubs argue that unsealing would reveal “highly sensitive information, such as specific pricing, costs, margins, growth strategy, and financial projections for multiple products (such as game tickets, concessions, apparel, and more),” as well as other materials that are “routinely sealed.”
The Cubs point out that it’s not just the team that has an interest in protecting this information from public review—it’s also other MLB teams. Unsealing, the Cubs say, “would harm the Cubs and potentially other Major League Baseball stakeholders if this information were publicly disclosed.”
To support this point, the Cubs note that Coleman “made no findings” as to precise dollar figures for Cubs expenses and thus didn’t publicly disclose finances. Instead, Coleman offered more generic projections as they were sufficient for purposes of reaching legal conclusions.
“That a baseball team would incur expenses related to ballpark operations, payroll, construction and equipment, and related topics is obvious and comports with the Court’s comment that it also relied on ‘common sense,” the Cubs write.
In addition, the Cubs note that sharing “detailed financial information,” including the Cubs’ contracts with other rooftop businesses, runs counter to the fact that the Cubs, Wrigley View Rooftop and other rooftop businesses are all, to some degree, competitors.
The Cubs’ contracts with other rooftop businesses could contain “highly sensitive competitive information such as audit rights, margins, and payment terms,” the disclosure of which, the Cubs insist, “could harm competition in a competitive market environment.”
In the days ahead, Coleman will issue a ruling on whether to unseal all, some or none of the documents. It’s fair to say that readership of whatever is unsealed would extend well beyond the Cubs and Wrigley View Rooftop.