Prince George's County Circuit Court Judge John Paul Davey "dismissed a small portion of Maryland’s suit against the Atlantic Coast Conference" over a potential exit fee on Friday and "put the rest on hold pending the resolution of a case in North Carolina," according to Jeff Barker of the Baltimore SUN. The decision was "a victory for the ACC, but not a complete one." Davey "accepted the ACC’s argument that the two cases should not proceed simultaneously because they were too similar to be treated independently." But he "left intact most of Maryland’s lawsuit that the ACC had hoped to dismiss." The ACC last November asked a North Carolina court to "declare that Maryland is subject to the full exit fee -- $52,266,342 -- for announcing it was leaving the conference." Maryland "countered with its own suit alleging that the exit fee is anti-competitive and should not be enforced." Maryland’s suit also said that the ACC is "improperly withholding shared conference revenues from the school." The conference in December "withheld a distribution of about $3 million owed to Maryland as what it called an 'offset' against the exit fee." Maryland had "not officially informed the ACC of its planned departure until this week." The school "argued in court that the ACC was wrong to withhold conference revenues since Maryland had not yet provided formal notice" (Baltimore SUN, 6/29).
