CHICAGO – When Manny Pacquiao made a comeback in his fight with unknown Australian boxer Jeff Horn who beat him last year following his devastating loss to American champion Floyd Mayweather in the overhyped Fight of the Century in 2015, many were asking, what for?

Manny will try to break his two-fight losing streak when he faces Argentine Lucas Matthysse for the WBA welterweight title on July 14 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The 39-year-old Manny pocketed more than $100 million in his fight with Mayweather. The question is: Why even bother to travel to Down Under to brawl with Horn, instead of working full-time as a senator?

Let me guess: Manny might be thinking, what if the thousands of ticket-holders, the pay-per-view subscribers, and closed-circuit distributors, who filed a class-action lawsuit, demanding a refund for his failure to disclose his severe shoulder injury before the Fight, win the lawsuit? Where is Manny going to get the money if he was going to refund more than he earned in that fight?

Instead of fighting Horn, Manny should have secretly hired a legal researcher to find out if ever there was an instance when disgruntled fight fans, who demanded refunds, ever got their way by filing a lawsuit?

I’m sure the researcher would come back with the news to Manny that his chances of beating the fans in the class suit are 50-50.

In a long line of decisions of cases filed by disgruntled fans that have yet to reach the United States Supreme Court, one Circuit court (Seventh) had always used the “license approach” to resolve the lawsuits against sports promoters whom fans blamed for “misrepresentations and omissions” for successfully concealing from fans information that fans “would not have paid to watch the fight.”

Using the “license approach” in dismissing the case filed against Manny and Mayweather by disgruntled fans of the Fight of the Century, Judge R. Gary Klausner ruled last year that “a ticket to see a sporting event gives the purchaser ‘nothing more than a revocable license’ to view whatever transpires at the ticketed event, regardless of prior promises or representations about the performance.”

Klausner is the U.S. District Court judge in the Central District of California in Los Angeles assigned by U.S. Judicial Panel on Multi-District Litigation (MDL) to consolidate MDL action that consists of 26 individual actions and 15 consolidated complaints

filed against Manny, Mayweather and their promoters.

To survive a motion to dismiss, Klausner said, a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to “state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). A claim is facially plausible if the plaintiff alleges enough facts to draw a reasonable inference that the defendant is liable. A plaintiff need not provide detailed factual allegations but must provide more than mere legal conclusions.”

Quoting the judicial standard from eight states drawn from the Seventh Circuit case, Seko Air Freight, Inc. v. Transworld Sys., Inc., Klausner said, “that the Chicago Cubs turn out to be a doormat of the National League would not entitle the ticket holder to a refund for the remaining games, any more than the star tenor’s laryngitis entitles the opera-goer a refund when the understudy takes over the role.”

Instead of legal damages, the Seko court joked that the “fan’s only available remedy was to become a White Sox fan.”

Citing another case, Bowers v. Fed’n Internationale de l’Automobile, Klauser said when disappointed fans sued Formula One race organizers for failing to publicly disclose in advance that 14 of the 28 cars originally slated to race in an event would not participate due to disqualifications despite the organizers’ advanced knowledge, the event was still held but the relatively few cars racing apparently made the event boring.

In dismissing the fans’ eventual lawsuit, the Seventh Circuit concluded that ticket holders had no right to see an “exciting” race, one where the drivers “competed well.”

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