WWE News: Legal battle with CM Punk costing WWE a lot of money?

What’s the story?

In a brilliantly-researched piece for Fightful.com, Chris Harrington has provided a whole host of new details on the ongoing lawsuit between CM Punk and WWE’s Dr. Chris Amman.

Amongst those details, Harrington revealed that WWE is claiming it had to shell out some $241,006.52 in compliance costs regarding a subpoena from February 2016.

In case you didn’t know…

Back in early 2015, Dr. Amman filed a lawsuit against CM Punk in light of comments that were made during Punk’s appearance on Colt Cabana’s Art of Wrestling podcast.

Those comments included, amongst other things, accusations that Amman had misdiagnosed a MRSA infection, that he'd over-prescribed antibiotics and that he'd refused to diagnose a concussion.

The heart of the matter

Beyond all the legal jargon, the basic gist of the story is as follows.

Dr. Amman sued CM Punk, claiming compensation for all sorts of things (everything from a tarnished reputation to “anxiety, stress, and loss of sleep and weight/muscle mass” that he’s suffered as a result of the ordeal).

WWE was then asked to provide evidence in support of Amman’s claims, to which the company replied that the provision of such evidence would cost almost a quarter of a million dollars.

That may sound like a lot of money, but it’s said to be within the ballpark the company was expecting. Also, and crucially, WWE won’t necessarily have to pay all of that sum. In December 2016, a judge ordered that WWE and Punk will split those costs 50/50, making WWE's share closer to $120,000.

What's next?

Not so fast, though. While a judge did order the costs to be split evenly, Punk would then object to the ruling. Instead, he’s offered to pay just $39,776—roughly a third of his proposed share.

Basically, WWE and Punk are still miles apart and need to thrash out exactly how that $241,006.52 will be split.

And as Harrington goes on to note in his article, the debate on the reasonableness and appropriateness of expenses “will continue for some time.”

Author’s take

To cut a fairly long story short, the $241,006.52 that WWE is claiming may sound like an awful lot of money, but it’s within the range that had originally been expected. Plus, even if they have to pay the full amount, it’s a mere fraction of the company’s overall profits.

Nonetheless, with the story continually unfolding, and having done so for a good two years now, if you're a fan of reading lengthy court documents then this is definitely an interesting one to keep an eye on.