Plaintiff was the owner and operator of a horse and harness race track located in Saratoga, New York. Defendants were assorted groups of associations and horse owners who raced horses at Saratoga. After the parties’ contract expired and renewal negotiations failed, plaintiff filed suit alleging that defendants had organized a boycott in contravention of §1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act and that the same defendants had procured some type of "tying" operation, whereby the defendants "threatened to withhold their consent to simulcasting of . . . other tracks’ races if those other tracks simulcasted races to Saratoga." Id.

After a preliminary hearing where the Court denied plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction and defendant’s motions for dismissal for lack of jurisdiction, plaintiff moved to amend their complaint to add more defendants. The motion was granted. All defendants answered the amended complaint and asserted various defenses. Plaintiffs then filed a motion to strike all of the affirmative defenses plead by defendants.

Plaintiff relied on Rule 12(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, stating that it was not seeking summary judgment. The Court, however, stated that the plaintiffs had fashioned their work in such a way so as to convert their own motion into one for summary judgment. However, the Court held that "despite plaintiff’s reliance on Rule 12(c), the [C]ourt will treat plaintiff’s motion as one to strike defendants’ affirmative defenses pursuant to Rule 12(f)." A Court may also strike a defense on its own initiative.

For plaintiffs to succeed in striking the defenses, the evidence must meet a three-prong test: "1) that there is no question of fact which would allow the defense to succeed; 2) that there is no question of law which would allow the defense to succeed; and 3) that the plaintiff would suffer prejudice from inclusion of the defense." Id.

The Court struck the equitable defenses of waiver, estoppel, laches, and voluntary consent. Defendants’ general denials of assertions in the plaintiff’s complaint were not stricken. The defense of dismissal for failure to state a claim was not stricken either. The Court noted that such a defense is "perfectly appropriate" for a defendant to state in the answer to the complaint. The defenses of lack of jurisdiction were stricken for the defendants’ failure to state them in a timely fashion.

Plaintiff next requested that the Court strike the defenses of implied antitrust immunity and implied repeal of antitrust laws. Plaintiffs had predicated their motion to strike the antitrust defenses on the prior ruling of the Court, which had denied defendants’ motions to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. The Court admonished the parties and noted that they had not ruled on any antitrust issue, but only used the analytical framework of implied repeal and antitrust in terms of whether the Court could retain jurisdiction.

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