As you should know by now, Ric Flair's wrestling future is in the hands of lawyers, after he quit TNA in mid May to attempt to get out of his contract in order to return to WWE and TNA responded by filing a lawsuit against WWE for contract tampering. The legal process is ongoing, with depositions yet to be taken from Flair, former WWE executive officer John Laurinaitis and new WWE Executive Vice President of Talent and Live Events, Paul Levesque, aka Triple H.

Dave Meltzer had the latest on this legal situation in his June 18th Wrestling Observer Newsletter with the basic gist being that he is no longer under contract to TNA, but due to the lawsuit he is unable to sign with WWE:

Flair is apparently no longer under a TNA contract, as he hasn't been paid by TNA on his contract. Flair quit the promotion on around 5/9 and stopped showing up to events, and after quitting, had his contract terminated by the company before they even filed the lawsuit according to the WWE side.

It seems that TNA is just delaying the inevitable and is hoping for a financial settlement from WWE for their troubles, even though Flair was the one most at fault by failing to appear as scheduled at his TNA bookings.

In a bad sign for TNA, WWE lawyer Jerry McDevitt has already managed to remove the temporary restraining order against WWE prohibiting them from negotiating with and signing TNA talent. However, in order to get this concession McDevitt claimed that "WWE has no interest in current TNA talent", which may mean that anyone in TNA looking to jump ship, like Matt Morgan and Alex Shelley, will have to wait several months to be signed to avoid raising suspicion that McDevitt was lying.

We will keep you updated Cagesiders as more news comes in about this lawsuit, but it doesn't look like TNA will gain much from it, outside of delaying Flair's obvious WWE return.