Jeff Jarrett, Impact Wrestling Fighting Over Deposing Scott D’Amore in Lawsuit

– Jeff Jarrett and Impact Wrestling are currently battling over whether to depose Scott D’Amore in Jarrett’s lawsuit against the company. PWInsider reports that Jarrett is trying to depose D’Amore, who is an EVP at Impact, in the lawsuit over his claims that Anthem used his GWF Amped tapes without his permission and then would not return the masters, which were later discovered to have been deleted by Anthem.

According to the site, Jarrett’s legal team had been trying to get D’Amore deposed before a previously-ordered cutoff date of December 6th for the discovery process. After that point, discovery will be halted. There was a telephone conference in which both sides agreed that D’Amore could be deposed after the cutoff. However, since D’Amore is a Canadian citizen, he cannot be ordered by a court in the US to be deposed as he is out of jurisdiction. Jarrett’s team had to spend over $4,000 in legal fees in Canada to ask that D’Amore be deposed.

Anthem is arguing that they ““force Mr. D’Amore to testify or accept service for him because he is an independent contractor.” Jarrett’s side has argued that D’Amore, as someone who occasionally works out of Anthem’s Impact offices in Nashville and has an Impact/Anthem email account, should be produced for deposition because “a subpoena is not necessary to compel attendance at a deposition if the person to be examined is an officer, director, or managing agent of the party.”

Jarrett’s reason for wanting to depose D’Amore is that:

“Mr. D’Amore is a key fact witness who will testify at least as to (1) when Defendant actually decided to terminate Plaintiff Jarrett; (2) Defendant’s decision to air content for which it knew it had not rights despite the risk of litigation (see email attached as Exhibit 2) after Mr. Jarrett’s termination; (3) his taking over Plaintiff Jarrett’s role upon Plaintiff Jarrett’s termination; (4) Defendant’s refusing to pay for the use of the content even though it knew it had an obligation to do so; (5) the value of the content at issue if it was independently created; and (6) Defendant’s ongoing use of Plaintiff Global Force Entertainment, Inc.’s trademarks without payment to Plaintiff Global Force Entertainment, Inc.”

Jarrett’s lawyers agreed to to go Canada to depose D’Amore on November 12th, but Anthem’s lawyers never responded and later said that they had no authority to accept for D’Amore. Jarrett’s side offered to do a video deposition, at which point Anthem reiterated that D’Amore is not an employee of the company despite the fact that he is labeled as an Executive Vice President of Anthem Wrestling. Impact president Ed Nordholm said in his own deposition that “Mr. D’Amore is an Executive and Vice-President of Defendant, which means Mr. D’Amore is an officer of Defendant, and is on the committee that manages the operations of Defendant”

The court has ruled that D’Amore, as an officer of Impact, may be noticed but not subpoenaed for a deposition. Both sides were ordered to work out a plan to depose D’Amore in a two-to-three hour session, either in person or via video conference, but it has not yet taken place.