PGA Tour requests to court that Hank Haney lawsuit be dismissed

The PGA Tour has requested the U.S. District Court in Southern Florida dismiss Hank Haney’s lawsuit that claims the circuit interfered with his contract with SiriusXM radio in 2019.

Haney was originally suspended following racist and sexist comments on his radio show prior to the ’19 U.S. Women’s Open. Shortly afterward Haney’s show was cancelled and the lawsuit, which was filed in December 2019, claimed the Tour “improperly intimidated, enticed and threatened SiriusXM Radio to suspend and ultimately terminate Haney’s radio broadcast.”

In the request for summary judgement the Tour claims Haney’s lawsuit should be dismissed “as a matter of law because the record is devoid of evidence.”

Haney’s contention that the Tour interfered with his contract stems at least partly from a call from Tour commissioner Jay Monahan to Scott Greenstein, SiriusXM president and chief content officer, the day after the incident.

Monahan told Greenstein that Haney’s comments were “completely unacceptable, indefensible.” In his testimony Greenstein said Monahan “was clearly upset” but that he “did not threaten Greenstein.”

The Tour also argued in its motion for summary judgement that the circuit has a “supervisory interest” in SiriusXM as a result of the license agreement between the two organizations and that “programming was required to be agreed upon by the parties in advance of distribution.”