Plaintiff Wild Card, Inc. accused Panini America of leveraging its market power to pressure distributors into refusing to carry Wild Card's products. The complaint centers on a closed-door meeting held at Panini's Irving, Texas headquarters in October 2021, where the company allegedly warned distributors that carrying Wild Card's cards would result in consequences relating to allocations, programs, and access.
Following that meeting, four major distributors refused Wild Card's allocations and previously committed shipments. Wild Card filed the lawsuit in the Eastern District of Texas, alleging violations of the Sherman Act, the Clayton Act, and the Texas Business and Commerce Code.
Panini moved to transfer the case to the Dallas Division of the Northern District of Texas under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a), arguing that the Eastern District lacked a relevant factual connection to the dispute. Wild Card opposed the transfer, citing judicial economy and the court's prior familiarity with the sports trading card industry from a settled copyright case.
Judge Amos L. Mazzant granted the transfer, finding that the private and public interest factors weighed in favor of moving the case. The court noted that while the two districts are geographically close, the Eastern District had no local interest in the litigation because neither party resides there and no witnesses live in the district.
The court determined that the incident giving rise to the suit—the distributor meeting—occurred in the Northern District of Texas. It rejected Wild Card's argument that the nationwide scope of the alleged anticompetitive conduct created a local interest in the Eastern District, stating that such a rationale could apply to virtually any judicial district in the United States.
Wild Card also argued that the court should defer to its choice of venue, a practice sometimes afforded in antitrust cases. The court held that while antitrust plaintiffs may choose from a broad range of venues, the convenience of the forum is still scrutinized under § 1404(a). The court found Panini met its burden to show the Dallas Division was the clearly more convenient forum.
The court also addressed Wild Card's reliance on a prior case, the AAA Sports Lawsuit, to argue for judicial economy. Judge Mazzant found that factor neutral, noting that the prior case was closed two and a half years ago, involved different claims, and implicated new witnesses.
The case is now transferred to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division.