Breaking Down the Potential Impact of WWE's Streaming Royalties Lawsuit

WWE's latest legal headache—a lawsuit over unpaid royalties—is one that promises to be more nuisance than disaster. 

The sports entertainment giant once again finds itself poised to fend off a foe in court. Rene Goguen, who wrestled as Rene Dupree, as Eriq Gardner detailed in the Hollywood Reporter, has filed a class-action lawsuit against WWE over not receiving royalties from programming shown on the WWE Network.

The Netflix-like streaming service features a wealth of on-demand archives. Goguen's entire WWE career is available to watch, from him and Sylvain Grenier forming La Resistance to his run on the ECW brand in 2006.

If this case progresses, the stakes will clearly be high. Should Goguen entice other plaintiffs to join him and WWE have to shell out cash for the streamed footage in question, the financial impact will be huge.

As Dave Scherer of PWInsider.com wrote, "Obviously, this is a huge case for WWE. They will need to fight this one with everything they have because losing here would be very, very costly." 

But as worrisome as all this sounds, WWE is likely to walk away unscathed. 

For one, Goguen's legal team may struggle to get the case off the ground. Class-action lawsuits require that the "class" first be certified. Doing so can be difficult if one struggles to narrow down the class of people that the lawsuit includes.

The Shriver Center's Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys lays out the issue in legalese: "If a class is defined in terms of vague or subjective criteria, such as the members' states of mind, the court has no objective means with which to identify the members of the class and therefore will not certify the class."

There are countless wrestlers whose matches and interviews are a part of the WWE Network. Is Goguen's legal team going to try to group them all together as part of a "wrestlers who worked for WWE before the advent of the WWE Network" class?

Another obstacle in Goguen's way is that he apparently signed away some legal right at some point.

The part of his deal that is the centerpiece of his lawsuit is where his 2003 contract says he is entitled to royalties from "technology not yet created." The WWE Network falls into that category. It arrived in 2014.

WWE attorney Jerry McDevitt, though, seems to believe that something the wrestler signed afterward cancels that out. Gardner noted that Devitt reached out to the Hollywood Reporter and explained that "the problem with this lawsuit is that Goguen signed a contract in 2011 that destroys his ability to bring these types of claims."

And other wrestlers have walked down similar roads without victories to show for it.

On SEScoops, David Bixenspan pointed out, Doug Somers, Doug and Tommy Gilbert, and Steve Ray all filed similar suits against ESPN and WWE over using footage of them. None of these were successful. 

This latest contract dispute could easily end the same way.

WWE will clearly do everything it can not to lose here. Goguen winning would open the floodgates for future lawsuits, potentially forcing the company to shell out money again and again.

There is a long way to go to get to that point, though. And if what happened with Somers and Gilbert is any indication, it won't get there at all.

Still, WWE has to be unsettled by the situation. Fresh off tangling with lawyers over concussion issues, it once more has to lean on its legal team.

The one certainty in all of this is that Gogeun's relationship with his old company will suffer. WWE won't be thrilled with being dragged into another lawsuit.

Don't expect a La Resistance reunion on Raw anytime soon.