How much was MJ damaged?

The Game Room
1

So The now shuttered grocery chain Dominick’s has been found liable for misappropriating Michael Jordan’s name/brand. Arguments are now underway to determine the amount of damages.Michael Jordan in court for lawsuit over grocery-store advertisement - ESPN

MJ wants somewhere up to $10 million. Safeway wants to pay a whole lot less.

I don’t want to undervalue the importance of someone controlling their brand, but I think the $10 million is ridiculous, and that MJ is coming across poorly. In context, I’d say maybe a couple hundred thousand - $500k tops.

So, how much of an award do you think is appropriate?

2

To me, it will be dependent in part on how much money the grocery chain can be shown to have made off of the use of MJ’s name (presumably not much, since they’re out of business now). But in any event, $10 million sounds very excessive.

3

Jordan has an established history of endorsement fees. His lawyers will probably submit evidence of how much he was paid to do equivalent endorsements and argue that Dominick’s should pay this amount.

4

Yeah - I could have posted more links. This is covered pretty heavily here in Chicago.

MJ’s team argues he won’t enter into any deal that isn’t going to get him $10 mill. No real comparisons for a “one-off” ad like this. The defense counters with a few “cease and desist”, nuisance type settlements in the tens of thousands, or a $100k usage for a documentary (which MJ’s team acknowledges wasn’t required under law but they gladly accepted.).

I’ve consistently seen that a grand total of two customers redeemed the coupons! :smiley:

Bottomline, he simply would not have agreed to this single ad - unless he was paid $10 mill. And NO ONE would agree to pay that for a single ad. So Dominick’s was wrong, MJ is right, and I believe some award is appropriate to discourage future misuse.

Also, if you get a chance, google up an image of the ad. It appeared in a special edition of the magazine congratulating MJ on his induction into the hall of fame, showed his jersey but not his face, and mentioned him by name. IMO, it was wrong, but not horribly egregiously wrong.