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Mike Tyson and Ric Flair’s former partners in the cannabis business have been granted an extension to respond to a lawsuit filed against them by Tyson and Flair in Illinois.
In December, Tyson and Flair—and the companies Carma and LGNDS—sued Chad Bronstein, Adam Wilks, Nicole Cosby, and James Case in U.S. District Court in Illinois, alleging 21 counts including securities fraud, money laundering, and self-dealing related to their roles as former executives in the cannabis business that produces cannabis products bearing the likenesses of Flair and Tyson.
Last week, the defendants filed for a motion with Judge Elaine E. Bucklo to extend the deadline for their response to the lawsuit from Feb. 23 until March 16. The unopposed motion was granted this week, and a scheduling conference is currently slated for April 13.
Bronstein—now a co-founder of the Real American Freestyle wrestling company—was previously Carma’s president and chairman while Wilks served as the company’s CEO and Cosby as chief legal officer. Case is a shareholder.
In the lawsuit—which seeks more than $50 million in damages, legal fees, and other associated costs—former executives were accused of using company funds for personal expenses; Wilks was accused of having a “kickback” deal with a vape pen maker.
Attorneys for Bronstein, Cosby, and Wilks denied the lawsuit’s claims in statements to Front Office Sports in December.
Wilks’s attorney Terry Campbell said, “These claims are as credible as the people they come from—in short, the allegations are without substance. This is nothing more than an attempt to spit out an earful of salacious headlines and attempt to coerce my client into paying money to them when he did nothing wrong. We will fight these meritless allegations—both the facts and the law are squarely on our side.”
Bronstein and Cosby’s attorney Jonathan Cyrluk alleged that “the complaint is fiction dressed up as a lawsuit.”
“Before filing, the plaintiffs tried to intimidate my clients with settlement demands that read more like a shakedown than a legal claim—demanding millions of dollars and attempting to force others to surrender their Carma shares,” Cyrluk’s statement continued. “My clients won’t be bullied and are prepared to knock out this meritless lawsuit in court.”
A spokesperson for the defendants declined to comment on the latest filing.
Bucklo, the judge overseeing the case, was appointed to the federal court in 1994 by then-President Bill Clinton. She has handled a plethora of high-profile matters in her time on the bench. Last year, she dismissed a suit from R. Kelly, who filed from prison accusing prison officers of illegally leaking private information about him to the press, citing the disgraced R&B singer’s “glaring” inability to comply with court deadlines. In 2021, she tossed a proposed class action that was lodged against FanDuel by a bettor who blamed the sports betting giant for losses allegedly suffered because FanDuel’s app did not provide accurate “real-time trading information.”
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