Primarily. But NHL is almost certainly a signatory to the PSA as well since they have to approve the sale.
There's a distinction in contract law between a patent defect and a latent defect. A patent defect is one that is obvious, or at least that could have been discovered with reasonable due diligence. A latent defect is one the seller knows about, but could not be discovered using reasonable due diligence.
If you're in the process of selling your house. You previously had a fire caused by bad wiring. You patch up the house good as new - but you never fix the bad wiring. That would be a latent defect. If the house subsequently catches fire again the new owner can potentially sue for not disclosing the bad wiring.
Now of course this is all just based on basic principles, and you'd need to review the PSA and other documentation carefully before forming an informed legal opinion.
Kind of a lot to unpack.
1) was the Dandanov case closed or still open when the sale was under way?
2) lawyers for these kind of acquisitions would certainly put forth documents to the seller asking for anything outstanding against the team. That would then require the Melnyk estate to disclose if the case was not closed.
Is there a case to be made vs the nhl or only to the Melnyk estate? Does the nhl have to review the terms of the sale and if they see that there the Sens noted nothing outstanding against the team that the onus was on the nhl to inform the buyer that the Dandanov case is in fact still open?
I expected the nhl to be better run in the sense that all contracts are stored in the nhl central registry. On the odd chance an amendment is needed on a contract, such as back in 2016 when Subban was traded before his ntc kicked in for the final 6 years of his contract, then his ntc would have to be amended and removed from his SPC. Didn’t the nhl also allow players in the final year of their contract if they were into their ufa years to have any trade protection in their extension retroactively applied to the final year of their current deal? I think Doughty got a ntc added to the final year of his second contract. That would require an amendment as well.
So if Ottawa was thinking that dada ice ntc was voided that should have required paperwork with all of the backup sent it the nhl registry to review and then they would update/amend the contract if the ntc was voided or if it was not voidable then the contract would remain as is.
Seems odd that there is a reliance on another team for the contract details when it should be the nhl registry that has the defacto terms of the contract on file.