23XI, FRM vs. NASCAR lawsuit: Curtis Polk adds former Meta attorney to legal team

As the NASCAR lawsuit continues to rage on, Curtis Polk has added a high-power antitrust attorney to his team. Polk is bringing on Eric Hochstadt, the Head of Antitrust Litigation at Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe, in New York City.

Hochstadt has worked on many cases in the antitrust world. He has represented companies such as Meta, Visa, H&R Block, and GrubHub. His work is known throughout the industry, mainly with large corporations. Now, Curtis Polk has added him to his legal team.

Polk has added Hochstadt to represent him in the counterclaim that NASCAR filed against 23XI Racing, Front Row Motorsports and, of course, Polk. It is a hire that shows how seriously the 23XI co-owner is taking that countersuit.

With last week’s hearing and then the decision by Judge Bell this week regarding the preliminary injunction request, perhaps it is not a coincidence that Polk went out and grabbed himself another experienced antitrust attorney.

NASCAR alleges it was actually the teams and Curtis Polk who were participating in business practices that violated antitrust law. The counterclaim frames the situation as the teams attempting to illegally get more money in the 2025 Charter Agreement than NASCAR was offering.

Attorneys are added regularly in cases like these. There is a massive legal team behind both sides of this lawsuit. However, a hire like his is meaningful, and not just some junior attorney. Hochstadt is a major player in antitrust law, and Polk has made a bit of a statement in hiring him.

Hochstadt was added officially on the docket earlier today ahead of this weekend’s races at Gateway. The NASCAR Playoffs and this lawsuit continue to compete with each other in the news cycle.

Curtis Polk countersued by NASCAR in March

Back in March, NASCAR filed a countersuit against the teams and Curtis Polk that almost dragged the other Cup Series organizations into the matter. The counterclaim says that the parties involved “willfully violated the antitrust laws by orchestrating anticompetitive collective conduct.”

Also in that original counterclaim filing, NASCAR accused the teams of being an “illegal cartel” As well as stating that Polk, “agreed to a scheme to pressure NASCAR to accept their collusive terms, including by engaging in media campaigns, interfering with NASCAR’s broadcast agreement negotiations, threatening boycotts of NASCAR events and engaging in a group boycott of a NASCAR Team Owner Countil Meeting.”

There has been a ton of back and forth in this lawsuit. The counterclaim is something that has gone lagely unnoticed, mostly because we have to get through this trial in the first place.

Despite the lowkey nature of this countersuit right now, Curtis Polk is getting himself ready. Perhaps we see more action regarding that part of the lawsuit in the coming weeks. Or, this is just cautionary. Either way, Polk isn’t messing around.