Federal Kickball Case Goes Away Quietly

In April, lawyers for both sides of WAKA LLC v. DC Kickball filed
paperwork with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia asking for the case to be dismissed.

The motion was granted.

And so ends the Greatest Kickball Lawsuit of All Time™.

The federal case was originally filed in February 2006 and involved the folks responsible for turning DC into the adult kickball epicenter.

WAKA, also known as the World Adult Kickball Association, alleged that Carter Rabasa, founder of DC Kickball, had violated copyright laws because his league used the same kickball rules as WAKA.

Those are also pretty much the same rules used by third graders everywhere. No third graders were named as defendants.

The complaint also alleged that Rabasa, a former WAKA volunteer, defamed WAKA by calling the group “the Microsoft of kickball” in a 2005 City Paper story.

Rabasa countersued, alleging in his filings that WAKA used monopolistic tactics on the way to becoming, um, the Microsoft of Kickball™.

No terms of the settlement are included in the court filings.

However, the DC Kickball website holds clues that Rabasa, who lacked the deep pockets of the, um, Microsoft of Kickball™, hit his knees.

First, there’s a disclaimer from Rabasa saying that no “defamatory and/or disparaging remarks regarding WAKA” will be allowed on the DC Kickball site.

Then there’s this syntax-challenged announcement labeled as “Apology to WAKA“: “Carter Rabasa, DCKickball and DCK Sports LLC regret and retract the defamatory and/or disparaging statements made regarding WAKA Kickball. Those statement were in error.”

(“Those statement,” huh? Is that a typo, or some sort of juvenile,
kickball-age appropriate “I had my fingers crossed when I said I’m
sorry!” trick?)

Even with Rabasa’s apparent fold, it’s hard to declare any winner here.

But the losers are legion: Anybody hoping that this case would reach a trial stage, so grownups would argue in a public courtroom over kickball—or Kickball™—is diminished by its early denouement.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 at 10:00 am and is filed under Children, D.C. Courts, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.