{"id":2571,"date":"2024-09-12T16:10:58","date_gmt":"2024-09-12T16:10:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/james-dolan-faces-deposition-in-lawsuit-over-charles-oakley-ejection\/"},"modified":"2024-09-12T16:10:58","modified_gmt":"2024-09-12T16:10:58","slug":"james-dolan-faces-deposition-in-lawsuit-over-charles-oakley-ejection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/james-dolan-faces-deposition-in-lawsuit-over-charles-oakley-ejection\/","title":{"rendered":"James Dolan Faces Deposition In Lawsuit Over Charles Oakley Ejection"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tA federal judge says Madison Square Garden owner James Dolan<\/strong> must sit for a deposition over the infamous 2017 ejection of ex-NBA player Charles Oakley<\/strong> from the Manhattan arena, ruling that the CEO \u201chad a courtside seat\u201d for the incident.<\/p>\n

\n\tMSG 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\u2019s lawyers suggested that the bid for a deposition was just one more effort to \u201charass\u201d Dolan amid a \u201crancorous\u201d lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in a ruling Tuesday, Judge Richard Sullivan<\/strong> rejected those arguments and ordered Dolan to be deposed \u2013 saying that the executive had \u201ca courtside seat to the action here\u201d and \u201clikely possesses relevant knowledge that cannot be obtained from other witnesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAt the most basic level, Dolan was an eyewitness to the removal of Oakley and can provide personal observations as to Oakley\u2019s behavior that evening and the force used to remove him,\u201d the judge wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement Thursday, an MSG spokesperson told Billboard<\/em>: \u201cThis 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.\u201d In his own statement, Oakley\u2019s attorney Valdi Licul<\/strong> said: \u201cWe are pleased the court rejected Mr. Dolan\u2019s efforts to avoid giving sworn testimony about Mr. Oakley\u2019s removal from MSG. We look forward to questioning him under oath.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOakley, 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 \u201cabusive behavior\u201d before he was kicked out.<\/p>\n

\n\tDolan is the majority owner\/CEO of Madison Square Garden Entertainment, a live music giant that operates the famed NYC arena in addition to Manhattan\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tMonths 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tSullivan 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 \u201cunilaterally escalated the confrontation, leading to his eventual forcible removal.\u201d But last year, an appeals court overturned parts of that ruling, too.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 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\u2019s employees used unreasonable force to remove him from the arena.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith Oakley\u2019s lawyers demanding a deposition to help prove those claims, MSG argued that Dolan was a so-called apex witness \u2013 the kind of top-level executive that judges rarely pull into court cases unless they\u2019re directly involved in the alleged wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in his decision on Tuesday, Judge Sullivan said that Dolan was a \u201cfar cry from the prototypical apex witness,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDolan is one of only two people who can attest to the contents of that conversation,\u201d the judge wrote. \u201cOnly Dolan can explain whether he signaled the guard and, if so, what his signal was intended to convey.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSullivan didn\u2019t give Oakley\u2019s attorneys everything they wanted. They were also seeking a court order that would allow them to dig through four years of Dolan\u2019s emails, but the judge gave them only access to emails from a three-week span immediately after the incident.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOakley has not articulated how Dolan\u2019s 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,\u201d the judge wrote. \u201cSuch extensive discovery would be disproportional to the needs of this case.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNo date for a deposition has yet been scheduled in court records, and Dolan\u2019s attorneys could seek the challenge Tuesday\u2019s ruling before he actually sits down with Oakley\u2019s attorneys.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3388,1075,3387,3390,458,3386,303,3389],"class_list":["post-2571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-charles","tag-deposition","tag-dolan","tag-ejection","tag-faces","tag-james","tag-lawsuit","tag-oakley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}