Fan Who Bought UFC 200 Tickets Sues Jon Jones For Negligence

Bloody Elbow reports that a fan named Sean Slattery, who bought four tickets to UFC 200 (July 9), is suing Jon Jones and his management team First Round Management. The lawsuit was filed in San Diego Superior Court on August 19. Slattery is suing for concealment, negligent misrepresentation, and negligence after Jones failed a drug test and was removed from the event three days before it was scheduled to happen. Slattery said he bought the tickets to the event “for the express purpose” of watching Jones.

The complaint stated: “Just before the fight, however, Jones was dropped from the fight card after officials learned that he had tested positive for banned performance-enhancing and/or masking substances. Plaintiff was thus robbed and defrauded of the value of the tickets, wherein he suffered both economic and non-economic harm, as a result of Jones’s actions in violating anti-doping regulations, and First Round’s complicity therein. In the alternative, Jones failed to disclose other controlled substances, and in doing so was negligent, to the relevant testing officials which again deprived Plaintiff of the value of his tickets.”

Slattery says that Jones and First Round “created a duty” to ticket buyers to be responsible before the fight, “…including but not limited to refraining from the administration of banned substances to Jones or failure to disclose prescription medication to testing officials, and/or taking measures to ensure that ostensibly non-banned supplement mixtures did not in fact did contain banned substances.”

Slattery claims that his ticket was non-refundable, which goes against the UFC’s July 6 press release in which they said that refunds were available where they were purchased. Slattery wants “special, general and punitive” damages that will be decided at a later time. First Round Management CEO Malki Kawa wouldn’t comment because he has yet to see the suit.