AMATEUR BASEBALL ASSOCIATION INC. v. NEW JERSEY AMATEUR BASEBALL LEAGUE LLC

NOT FOR PUBLICATION WITHOUT THE

APPROVAL OF THE APPELLATE DIVISION

This opinion shall not "constitute precedent or be binding upon any court." Although it is posted on the internet, this opinion is binding only on the parties in the case and its use in other cases is limited. R.1:36-3.

SUPERIOR COURT OF NEW JERSEY

APPELLATE DIVISION

DOCKET NO. A-0

AMATEUR BASEBALL ASSOCIATION,

INC., A New Jersey Corporation,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

NEW JERSEY AMATEUR BASEBALL LEAGUE,

LLC, a New Jersey Limited Liability

Company, MICHAEL MAZZOLLA, TIMOTHY

RITCHIE, ROBERT CZARNIEWY, BEAU

RIVERS, ZACK MARTIN, RYAN ROWLAND,

TONY GIRESI and ARMANDO DIAZ,

Defendants-Respondents.

____________________________________

February 7, 2017

Submitted October 19, 2016 Decided

Before Judges Alvarez, Accurso and Manahan.

On appeal from Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Passaic County, Docket No. L-1367-13.

Mario M. Blanch, attorney for appellant (Morgan M. Browning, on the brief).

DiFrancesco, Bateman, Kunzman, Davis, Lehrer & Flaum, P.C., attorneys for respondents (Steven A. Kunzman and Michael Marcus, on the brief).

PER CURIAM

Plaintiff Amateur Baseball Association, Inc. appeals from the summary judgment dismissing its tortious interference claims against a new rival league, defendant New Jersey Amateur Baseball League, LLC, its principals and several managers of teams that defected to play with defendant in its first season. Because we agree with Judge Brogan that plaintiff could not muster the facts to establish a prima facie case for tortious interference on summary judgment, we affirm.

The essential facts, viewed in the light most favorable to plaintiff, are easily summarized. Plaintiff started its men's recreational baseball league in 2002 with twenty-six teams. By 2012, plaintiff had the biggest adult recreational baseball league in the State with almost eighty teams.

Defendant Michael Mazzolla has played recreational baseball in New Jersey since 2000 in several different leagues, including plaintiff's league. He and defendant Timothy Ritchie eventually teamed up to start a league of their own. In December 2012, after fall play was over and before spring sign-ups, Mazzolla reached out to a network of friends to join their new league and began targeting players and rosters on team sites on the internet and the web sites of established leagues including the United States Amateur Baseball League, the Mitch Miles Baseball League, the Men's Senior Baseball League, North Jersey Amateur Baseball League, the Metropolitan Baseball League, the Jersey Shore National Adult Baseball Association, the Raritan Valley National Adult Baseball Association, and plaintiff's league. Defendant also obtained plaintiff's league roster list, which included the email addresses of all the team managers, and used it to contact the managers about switching leagues.1

Although defendant's league fees were ostensibly higher than plaintiff's, defendant discounted fees to teams willing to switch from other leagues. It also discounted fees to teams that got other teams to join. Defendant specifically targeted championship teams from other leagues, including plaintiff's, and lured them by offering a chance to play stadium games at the Newark Bears' park in Newark. Those ten or twelve games cost defendant $1500 each and resulted in a $10,000 loss over the course of defendant's first season. Defendant continued to press those incentives on teams that had already advised they were committed to plaintiff's league.

By virtue of those efforts, defendants succeeded in recruiting fifty-two teams for their league's inaugural spring 2013 season. Nineteen of those teams had played in plaintiff's league in the 2012 season.

Plaintiff alleges it had "verbal commitments" from each of those nineteen teams for the 2013 season, but concedes none of those teams had paid deposits. Although plaintiff would go about getting insurance, recruiting players and doing other things on behalf of a team in the off-season as soon as it got a verbal commitment, plaintiff would not put the team on the schedule if it had not made payment prior to the start of the season.

Plaintiff also acknowledges it has no written agreements with anyone, its oral agreements are only with team managers and not the players, and that teams are free to move between leagues from season to season and even to play in two leagues in the same season if they could so arrange their schedules. It concedes it maintained only a ninety percent renewal rate for teams and an eighty percent renewal rate for players over the course of its ten-year existence.

Plaintiff was forced to spend over $10,000 in advertising to stem the loss of teams to defendant and to recruit players to create ten new teams for the 2013 season. One of plaintiff's principals testified at deposition that those damages would continue for "every year that these teams aren't playing in my league" because defendants "came around with their lures and their deals and their discounts to pilfer teams out of my league." Although he expressed his view that "any business that is set up to run at a loss is not a business, it's [a] vendetta," he admitted he was without any facts to support his claim that defendants have a personal vendetta against his league. Plaintiff conceded defendant's league pricing and discounts were not in any way illegal.

After hearing argument, Judge Brogan granted defendants' motion for summary judgment, finding no reasonable jury could find for plaintiff on its tortious interference claims on the facts alleged. The judge found plaintiff had not established a protectable right in its relationship with the teams that had defected to defendant's league and could not establish malice because defendants' acts were justified by competition.

Plaintiff argues on appeal that summary judgment was inappropriate because "the facts could yield a favorable outcome for . . . plaintiff." We disagree.

To succeed on its claims for tortious interference, whether involving an interest in a contract already made or some future economic advantage, plaintiff was required to show "that it had a reasonable expectation of economic advantage that was lost as a direct result of defendants' malicious interference, and that it suffered losses thereby." Lamorte Burns & Co. v. Walters, 167 N.J. 285, 306 (2001). Malice is not judged from its ordinary sense of "ill will" but requires harm intentionally inflicted without the justification or excuse of the competition we expect of business rivals. Printing Mart-Morristown v. Sharp Elecs. Corp., 116 N.J. 739, 751 (1989).

Our Supreme Court has explained "the relevant inquiry is whether the conduct was sanctioned by the 'rules of the game,' for where a plaintiff's loss of business is merely the incident of healthy competition, there is no compensable tort injury." Lamorte Burns, supra, 167 N.J. at 306 (quoting Ideal Dairy Farms, Inc. v. Farmland Dairy Farms, Inc., 282 N.J. Super. 140, 199 (App. Div.), certif. denied, 141 N.J. 99 (1995)). To be actionable, a defendant's "conduct must be both 'injurious and transgressive of generally accepted standards of common morality or of law.'" Ibid. (quoting Harper-Lawrence, Inc. v. United Merchants and Mfrs., Inc., 261 N.J. Super. 554, 568 (App. Div.), certif. denied, 134 N.J. 478 (1993)). "The line clearly is drawn at conduct that is fraudulent, dishonest, or illegal and thereby interferes with a competitor's economic advantage." Id. at 307.

Applying those standards, it is plain Judge Brogan was correct that plaintiff had failed to establish a prima facie claim of tortious interference on this record. Leaving aside the obvious lack of a protectable interest in a relationship with teams that could and did change leagues in the off-season, and that none of the nineteen teams had yet to pay a deposit to plaintiff when they moved to defendant's league, it is obvious that plaintiff failed to show defendants acted with malice. That defendant undercut plaintiff's league pricing and offered stadium games at a significant financial loss in order to entice teams in plaintiff's league to defect and join defendant's new league is simply not enough to show malice.

Where a competitor is willing to target another competitor and aggressively cut costs below what may be necessary or profitable in order to increase market share, and there is no demonstrated restraint of trade, and no possibility of a later "monopoly situation," the courts have recognized that such conduct is not illegal, and is indeed justified by the beneficial effect on the marketplace.

[Ideal Dairy Farms, supra, 282 N.J. Super. at 204 (citing Brooke Group v. Brown & Williamson, 509 U.S. 209, 224, 113 S. Ct. 2578, 2588-89, 125 L. Ed. 2d 168, 187 (1993) (non-predatory below-cost pricing is a boon to consumers; that it may impose painful losses on its targets is of no moment so long as competition is not injured)).]

Because plaintiff failed to allege facts showing defendants' conduct violated the "rules of the game," summary judgment was appropriate as a matter of law. See R. 4:46-2(c); Brill v. Guardian Life Ins. Co. of Am., 142 N.J. 520, 540 (1995).

Affirmed.

1 In the third count of its complaint, plaintiff alleged the league roster constituted its confidential customer list, and that defendants wrongly misappropriated it. That count was dismissed without prejudice on defendants' motion made pursuant to R. 4:6-2(e) and not reinstated. Plaintiff has not appealed the dismissal of the claim.