There will be a hearing in the WWE vs. TNA lawsuit on Friday 6/29 in Nashville, TN.
WWE requested the hearing as they have asked the court to Alter, Amend or Clarify the Order dissolving the temporary restraining order against them. Due to the wording used in the language of the order, WWE feels that some of the statements could create "further disparagement and controversy", so they filed the following motion seeking to clarify their stance on the lawsuit. Basically, WWE wants to make sure they are not trapped by some of the language used in the order dissolving their restraining order as the court used some material TNA proposed and adopted their wording. WWE does not want to be bound legally by that wording as the case progresses.
Here's a quick recap of some highlights:
*During the 6/4 hearing, both WWE and TNA agreed to back away from the requested expedited discovery in regard to the confidential information Brian Wittenstein had passed on to John Laurinaitis. They could not come to an agreement regarding the restraining order TNA filed, leaving that up to the court to decide. The court felt that WWE's explanation of how they had used their own internal security procedures to police their servers was enough to show they didn't have any other copies of the material Wittenstein brought to them.
*WWE noted that Ric Flair was the only identified name that WWE had allegedly sought out while under contract to TNA. However, TNA had terminated Flair on 5/11/12, two weeks before TNA filed their lawsuit. So, while WWE was not planning to offer Flair a deal, he was also not technically a TNA talent, as the lawsuit claimed.
*There were no other contracted TNA talents named as allegedly contacted by WWE to induce them to leave TNA and get out of their contracts to go to WWE.
*The court asked both WWE and TNA to submit proposed orders to the court in regard to the situation. WWE was not happy with the language of the TNA filing as it did "not accurately represent the statements" WWE made to the court and only maintained the temporary restraining order.
*WWE noted that they only received the confidential TNA information from former WWE/TNA office worker Brian Wittenstein after he verbally offered the information. WWE claimed they were given a flash drive containing the information from Wittenstein "out of concern for the propriety of Wittenstein having such information." Laurinaitis handed it over to the company's in-house legal department and when they confirmed what the information was, Wittenstein was let go from WWE. They were not happy with the wording used in the motion as it could not be conducive with language that may be used during a potential deposition.
*WWE did not want the term "TNA personnel" used in court documents, since that was farther reaching than the issue as hand, being that the company had contacted "TNA Wrestlers."
*WWE wanted to make it clear that they never represented that they and Ric Flair had "no contact", only that they had "not solicited" Flair, "nor made any offer to him, and has no intention of doing so."