A federal judge says Madison Square Garden owner James Dolan must sit for a deposition over the infamous 2017 ejection of ex-NBA player Charles Oakley from the Manhattan arena, ruling that the CEO “had a courtside seat” for the incident.
MSG had argued that Dolan has little relevant info for the remaining issues in the long-running lawsuit, in which Oakley is accusing the company of assault and battery. MSG’s lawyers suggested that the bid for a deposition was just one more effort to “harass” Dolan amid a “rancorous” lawsuit.
But in a ruling Tuesday, Judge Richard Sullivan rejected those arguments and ordered Dolan to be deposed – saying that the executive had “a courtside seat to the action here” and “likely possesses relevant knowledge that cannot be obtained from other witnesses.”
“At the most basic level, Dolan was an eyewitness to the removal of Oakley and can provide personal observations as to Oakley’s behavior that evening and the force used to remove him,” the judge wrote.
In a statement Thursday, an MSG spokesperson told Billboard: “This is just another example of how the legal maneuverings of Charles Oakley and his lawyers continue to waste the time and resources of everyone involved.” In his own statement, Oakley’s attorney Valdi Licul said: “We are pleased the court rejected Mr. Dolan’s efforts to avoid giving sworn testimony about Mr. Oakley’s removal from MSG. We look forward to questioning him under oath.”
Oakley, a beloved former New York Knick with a contentious relationship with Dolan, was removed from the Garden on Feb. 8, 2017 after an altercation with security guards. Accounts of the incident varied widely; Oakley claimed he had done nothing wrong, but MSG said he had engaged in “abusive behavior” before he was kicked out.
Dolan is the majority owner/CEO of Madison Square Garden Entertainment, a live music giant that operates the famed NYC arena in addition to Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall, the Las Vegas Sphere and other prominent venues. He is also the majority owner of Madison Square Garden Sports Corp., which owns the Knicks.
Months after the incident, Oakley sued both Dolan and MSG, alleging a wide range of legal wrongdoing. Since then, the case has been on a seven-year journey up and down the federal court system.
Sullivan initially tossed the lawsuit in 2020, but a federal appeals court later overturned the ruling and revived the case. After litigation resumed, the same judge later tossed it again, pointing to video evidence showing Oakley had “unilaterally escalated the confrontation, leading to his eventual forcible removal.” But last year, an appeals court overturned parts of that ruling, too.
The current iteration of the lawsuit targets only MSG, not Dolan personally, and only includes claims of assault and battery, which are centered on whether the company’s employees used unreasonable force to remove him from the arena.
With Oakley’s lawyers demanding a deposition to help prove those claims, MSG argued that Dolan was a so-called apex witness – the kind of top-level executive that judges rarely pull into court cases unless they’re directly involved in the alleged wrongdoing.
But in his decision on Tuesday, Judge Sullivan said that Dolan was a “far cry from the prototypical apex witness,” since Oakley claims that Dolan personally spoke with a security guard prior to the incident and later signaled for them to remove Oakley from the arena.
“Dolan is one of only two people who can attest to the contents of that conversation,” the judge wrote. “Only Dolan can explain whether he signaled the guard and, if so, what his signal was intended to convey.”
Sullivan didn’t give Oakley’s attorneys everything they wanted. They were also seeking a court order that would allow them to dig through four years of Dolan’s emails, but the judge gave them only access to emails from a three-week span immediately after the incident.
“Oakley has not articulated how Dolan’s emails from years after the incident are likely to yield evidence concerning whether the MSG defendants used reasonable force when removing Oakley from MSG on the night in question,” the judge wrote. “Such extensive discovery would be disproportional to the needs of this case.”
No date for a deposition has yet been scheduled in court records, and Dolan’s attorneys could seek the challenge Tuesday’s ruling before he actually sits down with Oakley’s attorneys.