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LIV Golf suffered a significant legal setback in its antitrust case against the PGA Tour, one that could have implications for Saudi Arabia beyond the country’s investment in a rival pro golf league.
Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen ruled that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and PIF’s governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, are subject to subpoena requests from the PGA Tour. The ruling denying a motion to quash the subpoenas was made public via the federal court docket late Thursday night.
“PIF and Mr. Al-Rumayyan purposefully directed their activities at the United States,” van Keulen wrote in her 58-page order that found both were within jurisdiction in U.S. courts as it pertains to LIV Golf. “Their conduct in the United States was deliberate and recurring.”
Lawyers for PIF and Al-Rumayyan had successfully quashed subpoenas in federal court, including one Elon Musk sought for Al-Rumayyan to bolster Musk’s defense in a lawsuit filed by Tesla shareholders.
In a January filing, attorneys for LIV Golf argued that allowing discovery against PIF — including deposing fund officials — would “raise complex, sensitive, novel, and critically important issues of foreign sovereign immunity.”
PIF, one of the world’s most valuable sovereign wealth funds with assets of more than $600 billion, has invested in several U.S. companies, including Uber, Disney, and Facebook.
“To accept jurisdiction here could set a dangerous precedent allowing PIF to be sued in U.S. courts any time one of its portfolio companies is involved in a dispute,” lawyers for LIV Golf wrote in a November filing.
According to the order, the PGA Tour’s subpoenas related depositions of Al-Rumayyan and other PIF officials will have to be re-served. Van Keulen signed the order on Feb. 9, but she gave the sides a week to redact the document.
LIV Golf also argued that while PIF almost entirely funds it, all the tour’s decision-makers were based in the U.S.
“PIF is not a mere investor in LIV,” van Keulen wrote. “It is the moving force behind the founding, funding, oversight, and operation of LIV. PIF’s actions are indisputably the type of actions by which a private party engages in trade and traffic or commerce.”
Van Keulen was assigned to rule on whether PIF and Rumayyan should be subjected to discovery in the lawsuit originally filed against the PGA Tour in August. Several LIV Golf players were the original plaintiffs in the case that accused the PGA Tour of using “its dominance to craft an arsenal of anticompetitive restraints to protect its long-standing monopoly.”
The decision will undoubtedly impact the timeline for the case, which Judge Beth Labson Freeman presides over in the same federal courthouse in San Jose where van Keulen’s decision originated.
LIV Golf will likely appeal Van Keulen’s ruling, which Freeman would hear. If Freeman upholds Van Keulen’s decision, LIV Golf could file an appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — a process that would take months before a decision is rendered.
The PGA Tour had already sought a delay in the trial that is currently set to commence in January 2024.
Last month, the PGA Tour requested to add PIF and Al-Rumayyan as co-defendants to a countersuit filed against LIV Golf. In the fling, PGA Tour attorneys claimed “PIF and Mr. Al-Rumayyan played an active and central role in orchestrating” breaches to contracts the PGA Tour had with golfers to lure them to LIV Golf.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Feb. 24.
