Ferko lawsuit

The Ferko lawsuit is a common nickname for an American lawsuit that was challenged between plaintiff Francis Ferko, a resident of Plano, Texas and a shareholder of Speedway Motorsports, Inc.'s Texas Motor Speedway, and defendants NASCAR and International Speedway Corporation (ISC), which are both owned by the France family. Ferko contended that the defendants violated antitrust laws that prevented Texas Motor Speedway from obtaining two NASCAR NEXTEL Cup races per racing season, as many other tracks had.

As the case was preparing to go to trial in 2004, the parties settled the lawsuit as part of a larger restructuring of NASCAR. In the settlement, ISC sold the North Carolina Speedway in Rockingham (now known as Rockingham Speedway) to Speedway Motorsports, and Speedway then moved Rockingham's one NEXTEL Cup race (which had been held in February) to Texas. However, as part of NASCAR's date realignment, the February race was actually moved to Auto Club Speedway, and the date given to Texas was the November date previously held by the prestigious Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, which gave Texas a race in the Chase for the Nextel Cup and cost Darlington one of its two race dates. For its part, Speedway had to agree that Rockingham would be used only for non-competition NASCAR uses, such as for movie settings about the sport or for testing. As a result of a 2006 NASCAR testing rule change limiting testing on tracks used for NASCAR competition, testing at Rockingham has become more commonplace.

However, Ferko had his life fall apart as a direct result of the lawsuit. He lost his job in food safety, because his boss disliked the publicity that Ferko received, and he and his wife were forced to move to Atlanta for his new job. Shortly after moving, their 20-year-old son Anthony, who did not move with them because of his own 6-month-old son, committed suicide. After he and his wife failed to win custody of their grandson, they were divorced. In 2005, prior to the initial running of the Dickies 500, Ferko said that "[k]nowing what I know now, I definitely would not have pursued [the lawsuit].... I never expected those kinds of unintended consequences to occur."

In 2005, Kentucky Speedway filed a similar suit against NASCAR and ISC, requesting a NEXTEL Cup race at their venue. However, unlike the promise of a second race at the heart of the Ferko lawsuit, the France family had expressly told Kentucky Speedway that it would not be given even one race, and so the case was filed on antitrust grounds only. The lawsuit was dismissed on January 7, 2008, although the track's owners have appealed the dismissal. On May 22, 2008, Speedway Motorsports, Inc. announced it had purchased Kentucky Speedway from Kentucky Speedway, LLC. The purchase was finalized on January 1, 2009. Bruton Smith, head of Speedway Motorsports Inc. who is buying the racetrack, said he has plans to bring a Sprint Cup race to Kentucky Speedway. That is expected to come in 2011 when Kentucky Speedway is expected to gain a date at the expense of Atlanta Motor Speedway, its sister track.

References

• Wilson, Jeff. "Fan wishes he hadn't filed suit". Dallas-Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Archived from the original on 2006-07-08. http://web.archive.org/web/20060708031401/http://www.thatsracin.com/mld/thatsracin/13059399.htm. Retrieved 2006-12-28.