Owners of Kickball Goliath Now Suing Each Other
The evil geniuses who make a living by claiming a kids game as their own aren't playing well with each other anymore.
The four founders of the World Adult Kickball Association (David Lowry, Jimmy Walicek, Johnny LeHane, and Rich Humphrey) made themselves look like playground bullies last year by filing a federal lawsuit against fellow local adult kickballer Carter Rabasa. That complaint alleges that Rabasa's league, DCKickball, violated copyright law by using the same kickball rules that WAKA and every third grader since caveman times use.
Well, it turns out that those wacky WAKAns aren't content to just sue outsiders. While waiting for the DCKickball litigation to be resolved, these fine fellows are suing each other, too. According to the Virginia Lawyers Weekly, the three other founders apparently decided that Humphrey wasn't pulling his weight and voted him out of the limited-liability corporation that owns WAKA and takes in millions of dollars in dues. Then they filed a lawsuit against Humphrey in circuit court in Fairfax County alleging he was tampering with the group's Web site. (WAKA brass is big on Web-site chicanery, having bought up the dckickball.com domain name after Rabasa announced his intention to form a rival league.) Then Humphrey filed a countersuit against the other three, using all sorts of grownup words like "fiduciary" to say that his apparently ex-pals ripped him off.
Somebody needs a spanking!
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1:30 pm
Why do people still play with these playground bullies?
1:48 pm
Screw the lawyers. Let's have a sudden-death kickball play-off.
5:32 pm
Screw the play-off. Just kick em in the balls.
9:42 pm
Baller: That's Rugby, not Kickball.
8:46 pm
Go away, kickball. Just--just go away. Forever.
5:54 pm
These guys are hilarious! Can someone start a new league in Los Angeles? Please?
11:58 am
I'm not at all surprised that these money and power hungry fools are now suing each other. I played in WAKA for several years and left because these guys had sucked all the fun out of a KID'S sport. It's amazing how they've lost all sight of why they started the league in the first place. How far they've come from four buddies at a bar looking to meet chicks! Money really does very ugly things to people, sadly.
12:06 pm
As part of the original WAKA league/division that STARTED this national kickball phenomenon (we have since taken our division to DCKICKBALL, a move we are even more satisfied with now), this frankly doesn't surprise me. Absolute power corrupts, absolutely. Kickball used to be a bunch of friends kicking a red ball around and having some fun. Now it's become a money-making adventure under WAKA and will eventually collapse under all the greed. I know that my friends spent a lot of time as volunteers for WAKA and helped with the rules/regulations when it was a fledgling operation and NEVER got compensated. The four founders have just taken all the credit and all the money and want to sue anyone who gets in their way. As a current team member proudly exclaims, "WAKA sucks and swallows".
4:51 pm
This was published as part of a massive division newsletter and went out to 300 or so kickballers. It couldn't have been any more accurate.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/246/447641728_02db409f71_b.jpg
6:03 pm
I left WAKA after 1 season because of their greed. I am happily playing in a city league in Manhattan Beach. Ask your cities to start up a kickball league as they would with a softball league.
5:01 pm
i'd just like to say, for the record, kickball is played with a soccerball.